Not long ago, economic reporting was the most primitive of news scams. Few campaign reporters understood much about finance and campaign aides and Hill staffers could often successfully convince them “the economy” was up or down based on a handful of indicators: stock prices, unemployment rates, and inflation stats. The economy might be “booming” or “sluggish,” but there was seldom any effort to connect financial fads to real-world problems. When newspapers finally began offering “business sections,” there was some early coverage of the dirty underbelly, but these pages soon became cheerleading sections, written not for broad audiences but people in finance.
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