Program Interruption...

DISCLAIMER: If you aren't mad when you watch the below linked video, you are seriously deranged. And may suffer from "over feeling syndrome", lack of logical reasoning, and general inability to separate ideals from reality.

This week I'm supposed to focus on disability insurance. While it's an important topic, I just can't shake one of the more stupid and shocking comments I've heard from a reporter in the last year. While driving to a meeting listening to Portland area's more conservative (yes, that's a rarity on the West Coast) morning radio show, a "financial reporter" commented that he "wasn't sure how to read the economy given conflicting data. He went on to offer surprise that "despite gains in the Dow Jones, housing foreclosures are at a high".

There are so many flaws with this report that I'm not sure where to begin. First and in general, economic reports tend to be backward looking -- i.e., they report on findings, or what has been viewed in the past, so therefore they aren't necessarily indicative of future performance. Second, he tries to base economic outlook on two uncorrelated measurements -- the DJIA, a poorly constructed index measuring performance of 30 stocks (hardly representative of the US economy), and housing foreclosures, a problem exacerbated by over zealous lending policies and... you didn't guess it... uber liberal policies that increased in the Clinton era but began years earlier... (FYI, I don't post this link as a political statement, just providing some background and another angle that by the way never was and never will be reported in the mainstream media).

As someone who has lived abroad in one of the world's more liberal countries -- France, I'm still dumbfounded on an almost daily basis when I watch French News and see a less biased, more fact-based reporting style in the media. Now I'm not blaming the US media for problems -- that's too generalist and doesn't recognize the good reporting that is done, but I am arguing that politically, we tend to have one view and that anything else is "fringe" and relegated to the Fox network.`

I'm not blogging as a politico but I am suggesting that we all take responsibility for the news and educate ourselves so that stupid, uneducated reporting -- whether it be on conservative, non-partisan, or liberal channels be recognized as such.

WINE PAIRING: Nada. we all need to sober up to this problem. Why is it that math, science, art and English are required but that someone can be graduated from high school and college without any financial education?!!