Media bias on Black Friday retail numbers

Excellent article from BigPicture blog.

As you can expect, media tends to report retail numbers based on incorrect sources. This BigPicture blog entry discusses this in detail.

1. Sales data for Black Friday will be touted by biased interest groups. They are invariably have an upside bias;
2. Survey data will be taken as the equivalent of actual sales;
3. Strong forecasts will be subsequently proven wrong;

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/12/spinning-black-friday-retail-sales/

BigPicture also notes that Master Card’s ShopperPulse data is more reliable when it comes to measuring what people spent (via their MC Credit Card). This data has proven to be more reliable than either foot traffic, surveys and other biased sources.

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U.S is in recession since Dec 2007: NBER

The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already believed about the state of the economy .

http://biz.yahoo.com/cnnm/081201/120108_recession.html

Filed under: Economy, Economy Statistics | | No Comments »