Econospinning: How to Read Between the Lines When the Media Manipulate the Numbers (Hardcover)

by Gene Epstein (Author)
Key Phrases: hidden unemployment rates, monthly madness, nonfarm payroll employment (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Econospinning has everything going for it. The book's focus - how economists and publications mislead readers, often to buttress their ideological positions - is inherently important."--Australian Financial Review

"There is lots more to Epstein's book and it is all of the highest quality."  (Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Winter 2007)

Product Description
Gene Epstein knows a thing or two about economic data. Before becoming the Economics Editor for Barron's in 1993, he was a senior economist at the New York Stock Exchange. Now in Econospinning, Epstein supplies readers with a book that attempts to cut through the veil of economic misinformation commonly reported in today's media.

Assuming no prior knowledge on the readers part, each chapter of Econospinning is structured around fairly simple propositions about the economy or about specific economic data—from tracking employment numbers to measuring corporate profitability—that are then contrasted with the distortions of today's media coverage.

Along the way, Epstein exposes bad reporting by the elite media, including The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Economist—and especially by The New York Times and its economics columnist Paul Krugman,

Epstein also deconstructs CNN newscaster Lou Dobbs’ coverage of outsourcing and globalization; the illusory connection between abortion and lower crime rates, and bad theories about the role of real estate brokers, featured in the bestseller Freakonomics; the treatment of the working class portrayed in Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed; and the sensationalized coverage of the employment report by CNBC’s "Squawk Box."

From the disputes over Social Security to misinterpretations of the unemployment rate, Econospinning points out the unfortunate lack of integrity that pervades mainstream economic reporting.

Gene Epstein (New York, NY) has been Barron's Economics Editor since 1993 and writes the column, "Economic Beat." A frequent speaker on the conference circuit, Epstein has been interviewed on CNBC, CNN, NJN Public TV, and BBC TV. He holds an MA in economics from the New School and a BA from Brandeis University.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 246 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (August 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471735132
• ISBN-13: 978-0471735137
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #233,417 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Open Letter to "Auros of Palo Alto" from Author Gene Epstein (in which I also announce my new blog, econospinning.com), September 9, 2006

By	Eugene G. Epstein "Gene Epstein" (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Dear "Auros of Palo Alto":

If you're going to "review" my book without bothering to read any of it, your remarks should at least be cribbed from someone who actually has read it. But blogger Brad DeLong, whose critique you parrot in detail, barely finished a few paragraphs, as you yourself will discover if you check out my response to DeLong on my own blog, econospinning.com--a running commentary on media reaction to my book.

Just for starters, you'll find that if DeLong had only finished reading the three pages my book devotes to the employment report and the bond market, he would have discovered that I did not commit the naive error he attributes to me--and which you, as DeLong's dupe, then repeat.

Of course I looked at the bond market's response to the employment report immediately before the data are released, as DeLong would have discovered if he'd only read a few more paragraphs in that three-page section. Do you think I could write for a sophisticated market weekly like Barron's for the past 14 years and not know that markets move on expectations?

By trusting DeLong, dear Auros-of-Palo-Alto, you remind me of the dumb guy from junior high who didn't even know to cheat off someone who had actually done the reading!

But it's not too late to reform. Try reading my blog, then try my book--and then I suggest you try writing a review based on your own opinions.

Warmly,

Gene Epstein

27 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you really care about analysis...., August 21, 2006

By	David Zetland (UC Berkeley) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

... then you should read this book. Epstein spends at least half on labor indices and their abuse by pundits (Krugman, CNBC, et al.). That will be a hard slog for someone who does not make her living looking at numbers. (I am a PhD student in economics.) Luckily, Epstein offers a sensible solution (12 month moving averages of employment) that people who bet money on the employment figures could use. He attacks (his words) the "perfection" of Greenspan-the-technocrat convincingly but fails to mention that Greenspan's biggest strength was people's belief in him. This is good news/bad news: numbers are hard for people to understand -- compared to feelings -- and someone who makes things seem "just right" can indeed make it so. NOT so in the case of Lou Dobbs (known idiot), Krugman or Levitt, when they offer hocus-pocus that supports peoples' underlying prejudice, eg, foreigners are bad/taking out jobs, the republicans are robbing the little guy, RE agents rip you off when selling your house, or crime fell b/c there were fewer unwanted BLACK criminals. Epstein does a good job showing that those numbers have weak support but -- alas -- does not provide alternative numbers. This is the work for others, of course, but it will not give readers a conclusion to take away -- only doubt, which is a good thing to have in any case.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Important Scrutiny of the Mass Media But Adds to Reader Uncertainty, November 21, 2006

By	David Weinstein (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am an average reader to economists: never took a course in the subject, have read and heard statistics quoted and interpreted in the mass media. I appreciate the correction in this book of errors in the mass media. I shall look upon the writers and publications scrutinized by this book with stronger analysis now. But I wish the author of this book had enjoyed the privilege of a better editor.

One disappointment about this book is that it itself commits errors. In the name of identifying journalist errors, it commits author errors. They are of the sort a non-economist editor would notice. They may not always affect the author's thesis or argument but they make the thesis and argument less accessible to the public.

(Page number references are from the year 2005, hardcover edition.)

One type of error is carelessness. In a somewhat unimportant error, Epstein says that unincorporated self-employment is the only category that the Household Jobs Survey includes and that the Establishment Survey omits (33). Epstein himself was pointing out three paragraphs earlier, though, that agricultural occupations -- farming, forestry, fishing, and hunting -- are overlooked by the Establishment Survey while included in the Household Survey. Even though the growth of agricultural occupations was flat over recent years, to say later that only unincorporated self-employment is tracked by the Household Survey and omited by the Establishment Survey is to speak too loosely for the average reader to follow.

Epstein complicates acceptance of his views by committing errors of inconsistency. First, he points out that unemployment duration is longer now than in earlier decades because women have come to participate in the work force in more serious career positions and look for work more carefully after they leave their job. The work force is older and older workers are also more careful about what position they accept. (46) Later, he says that Bureau of Labor Statistics economists adjust for the 1994 redesign of the Household Survey and find that unemployment duration was longer in 1990 than in 2000, and 2000 durations were not longer than in 1980. (48) What makes this inconsistency even bigger is that he just went through a long analogy to cancer, to explain a job situation in which unemployment durations are longer. He said there are more cancer cases nowadays only because more people live longer, comparing people who live longer to women and older people who look for work more carefully. Enviromental and dietary factors are not to blame for more cancer cases, just as the job market is not to blame for longer durations of unemployment. (45-46) So, there must be longer durations of unemployment in recent years --- or have there not been?

Epstein's wording is also misleading sometimes --- not saying what he intends to say. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised their definition of Hidden Unemployed in 1994 by adding two new qualifications to the old ones ("also had to answer yes to these two questions", p. 63). One of those old qualifications was giving a job market reason for not looking for a job during the past month. But after he describes the two new qualifications, he says most of those who meet them "gave reasons other than discouragement for not having looked for work over the past month". But that reason was required under the old design; it is still required to be included in the Hidden Unemployed category. It takes a lot of thinking about it, puzzling, to figure out that those two new qualifications for Hidden Unemployment really aren't in addition to the old ones but are part of a different combination of qualifications to be fit in that category.

Also misleading is Epstein's use of "discouragement". Discouragement means more than some type of reason for not looking for work. Although in normal conversation, discouragement is a term that could describe an attitude about the job market, in this discussion the term has a larger meaning. Discouragement is a BLS category of responses to a lot of questions. It means all of the qualifications that the BLS looks for in fitting an individual into this category. Confusion results from using the same term in the same discussion, without note, in different ways. He says that most of those who "also had to answer yes" to the two new questions gave reasons other discouragement for not looking for a job. His decision to use the word "discouragement" for giving other than a job market reason throws the passage into chaos. We are to think that even though they are not "discouraged", they are Discouraged Workers.

These four writing style errors were found by reading three chapters. Imagine how much difficulty and error results from reading the whole book!

It is very entangled writing, and makes for much re-reading, not say dizziness. Just as the mass media's often brief treatment of the economy makes their audience unsure what to think without further reflection, Gene Epstein's unclear and inconsistent presentation keeps his readers unsure what to think, too. If this is supposed to be a book so the average person can make sense of mass media coverage, it should be more accessible to the public.