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CBC reports on “wretched retail”; fails to report on “fabulous retail” when sales were rising

When 2007 retail sales rose by 4.2% last year (5.8% in Canada), the CBC didn’t make much of it. 

But when they drop 2.7% in December—in the midst of what they keep harping about—promoting—as being “the worst economic recession!” and that “it’s getting worse!” and maybe it’s even a “deep recession!” and possibly even a “global depression!” (also known as gosh that Obama sure does have a tough job to do to turn that around, but I bet he will, since it’s not nearly as bad as we’re trying to make you think!  Wink!), they’re all over it.

And therefore, the CBC banner looks like this:

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Reality check:  Wretched?  When they’re down by just 2.7%?  After all their talk of economic Armageddon?  I think that’s amazingly good

By the way, for the entire year, retail sales were down 0.1 per cent.  That’s one-tenth of one percent.  The CBC Newsworld reporter failed to mention that.  On purpose

And here’s something they also fail to report on their big scary “YOUR BUSINESS” segment newscast, even though I think I can somehow prove that they have the information in hand over there at the big socialism-reliant state-owned media behemoth:

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If all that bad economic news has made you nervous about spending money or investing in the stock market, blame the people telling you about it.

Even if your job is safe, the value of your house hasn’t plunged and your investment portfolio isn’t keeping you up at night, some experts say the media is scaring consumers from opening their wallets, which in turn is only adding to the woes of Canada’s recessionary economy.

“Media attitudes do help to shape how consumers feel,” said Glen Hodgson, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada, an Ottawa-based economic research group.

“If (the media) keep saying the sky is falling, well, people think the sky is falling.” …

But the CBC doesn’t care.  Or worse, they do.  They are fully aware, and carry on as they do, anyway.  For some reason. 

In fact this is at least the second time they’ve been told that the media is largely driving this recession.  Not including the dozens of times I’ve mentioned it.  Overand overand over… repeatedly…

For example, they did a report last year which I blogged about in a blog entry called “CBC constantly trashes economy; asks academic if it’s possible to talk nation into recession”.  Here’s part of that actual entry:

[…]

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CBC anchor Harry Forestall: Do you worry sometimes that we could we could effectively talk ourselves into a recession?  Is there any risk of that?

With no sense of irony whatsoever at the CBC, he asked that question over the huge CBC banner tendentiously reading “MARKET MISERY”.  Previous banners today and since roughly the exact date Stephen Harper was elected have read things like “THE R-WORD?” and “THE image  D-WORD?” and “ECONOMIC MELTDOWN”, and “ECONOMIC CRASH COMING?” and “HEAD FOR THE HILLS”.  (Never with the term “so-called” before those things, as they do “the so-called war on terror”.) 

And the guest, Associate Professor of Economics at Dalhousie University, Marina Adshade, threw this back: 

Marina Adshade:  “Oh I definitely worry that we can talk ourselves into a recession.”.

D’oh!

It’s not that they didn’t know that—they certainly did.  They bank on it.  It’s just that they probably didn’t exactly want that cat to be let out of the bag, at least not quite so publicly. Layton and Dion are gonna be pissed! 

image  And she continued:

  “So much of what happens in the economy depends on how people perceive what’s going to happen in the future in terms of their employment and in terms of their investment and if people start getting concerned about those things, then they start scaling back on their spending, people start losing their jobs, because people aren’t buying the goods that they’re producing anymore, and it definitely can create some problems in the economy.  One of the things that kept the U.S. economy over the summer is that Americans continue to spend, they continue to buy.  In the last month that’s really changed and they started to scale back on their spending, I think if Canadians get concerned about a recession that’s exactly what could happen here.”

I could just about hear the CBC producers and crew screaming from control rooms across the country.  Damn!  We set him up with the university professor! He had to ask that question?  And was she vetted?  What is going on around here?!  

Well anyway, it confirmed that their apparent tactic is worth continuing. You can talk down the economy by constantly raising doubts and trash talking it, just like Dion and Layton do.  It’s just that it’s more embarrassingly obvious when they do it now. 

Minutes later:  Here comes another interview.  We’re all going to economic Hell. 
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But we support the troops by golly!

 

Joel Johannesen
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