Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Great Moments in Ideology

I'm just taking this whole-cloth from Matthew Yglesias:

Yesterday I read: “Oil prices posted their biggest one-day gain on Monday, jumping more than $25 a barrel as investors dashed into commodities on concerns about the government’s plan to bail out the financial system.”

Then I wrote:

But of course if crude oil prices had gone down, we’d be “explaining” this as “concerns about the government’s plan to bail out the financial system” driving pessimism about growth. The truth is, none of the people writing this stuff have any real idea of why things are happening.

And now today:

Crude oil futures prices fell Tuesday as declining stock prices and the soft dollar signaled some investor concern over the United States government bailout of Wall Street and the market moved on after technical factors provoked a surge on Monday.

I find it amazing that this stuff gets published.

'Tis a wonder to behold, indeed.

UPDATE: One of Ygelsias' readers sends in this follow-up:

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX%3A.DJI

Recent headlines include:

MARKET SNAPSHOT: US Stocks Rise After Lawmakers Pick Over Bank Bailout (34 minutes ago)

MARKET SNAPSHOT: US Stocks Sink As Lawmakers Pick Over Bank Bailout (1 hour ago)

MARKET SNAPSHOT: US Stock Indexes Up As Lawmakers Mull $700 Billion…(5 hours ago)

MARKET SNAPSHOT: US Stocks Fall As Traders Await Bail-out Details (Sep 22, 2008)

Hilarious.