Masood Mortazavi's Weblog

Wednesday May 04, 2005

[ Economics ] Stagflation--Reading the Paper vs. Listening to Radio "News"

Often (of course, not always) radio news, say NPR and programs produced for it, simply regurgitate what is already published in leading papers.
Take NPR and Marketplace on Tuesday. Two stories grabbed my attention in particular.
One NPR piece reported on public transportation via buses in L.A. vs. the same in Manhattan. It was a well-crafted, memorable piece with actual sounds of buses and interviews with passengers and experts in their life and work environments.

Another, a Marketplace piece, was simply a regurgitation of other reports on the dismal state of the U.S. economy. I had read about the same in a Financial Times report form Washington, Tuesday morning. The FT report was much better put, more lucidly argued with far greater impact. (Christopher Swan, "Dark Clouds on U.S. Economic Horizon Despite Optimism," Financial Times, May 3, 2005, P. 8) It contained one very impressive paragraph:

The basic problem appears to be that consumers have the willingness to spend more but increasingly lack the ability, while businesses have the money to step up spending but seem to lack the willingness.

Instead of this lucid paragraph, the Marketplace report tried to explain the technical phrase stagflation. (My own first encounter with this technical phrase was probably while reading an article by Paul M. Sweezy in one of the early 1980s issues of the Monthly Review, a magazine run by socialist American economists.)

Now, is it more important for the listener to know what is really going on (see quoted FT paragraph above) or to know the proper, academic definition of stagflation. I wonder.

In the midst of all this, Marketplace did carry a pretty good commentary by Joseph Stiglitz on the talk regarding China's currency floatation. In the main, he rightly insisted that the U.S. needs first to pay attention and put its own house in order by reining haywire spending and the deficit. It is most interesting that all this is coming at the same time the Congress is funding yet another year of invasion to the tune of several hunderd billion dollars, not to mention the absolutely immeasurable human cost, most of it paid by the invaded.

Of course, when we listen to radio news while we drive in traffic, it won't be odd to feel totally trapped and ready for a very good brain-wash by the "news". It happens specially when we are not paying attention, which is often the case when we drive.

Media, Economics, Public Transportation, Stagflation.