http://www.politicollision.com/story.php?title=usa-today-email-understates-durable-goods-disaster-linked-ap-report-makes-excuses-for-days-awful-econ-news ... when I received the following email from USA Today this morning (available here without subject line), I thought it surely must be mistaken. Well, the item I thought was a mistake wasn't one, while the one I thought was probably okay understated the underlying catastrophic news. Surely nondefense aircraft orders didn't disappear and then some, right? Oh yes they did: Yes, that is a decline of 101.8% for new aircraft orders from $19.199 billion to -$0.346 billion, representing net cancellations on a seasonally adjusted basis. The raw numbers indicate that net new aircraft orders were a "whopping" $33 million. As seen in a graph at Zero Hedge, the absolute level of durable goods orders is the lowest seen since December 2009 or possibly January 2010, making the report a sort of economic Groundhog Day, almost three years after the original. As to the supposed drop in the 4-week moving claims average, the Labor Department's announcement clearly states that "The 4-week moving average was 374,000, a decrease of 4,500 from the previous week's revised average of 378,500." I have no idea how the AP reporter involved could have committed such an error, but I do know why the deceptive headline and excuse-making are in there. Maybe it's me, but it seems that blatant reporting busts such as these go overwhelmingly in the direction of making things seem not quite as bad as they really are... Continued USA Today Email Understates Durable Goods Disaster; Linked AP Report Makes Excuses For Day's Awful Econ News | NewsBusters.org http://bitly.com/Soz89L Fri, 28 Sep 2012 07:09:09 EDT en