This, from the "Financial Times" Editorial Board, Neither Tells It Straight Nor Plays Its Proper Position. So What to Do?

What to do when the Editorial Board of a usually very good newspaper goes all-in on the stupid?...

What to do when the Editorial Board of a usually very good newspaper goes all-in on the stupid?...

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Yes, they really do say this!:

Financial Times Editorial Board: Opinion The FT View: Biden’s economic messaging is falling flat: ‘Strong national data obscures Americans’ everyday struggles…

They tell us: “America’s economy is booming” but somehow only “on the surface”.

To paraphrase:

1. Polls say Americans are not happy with Biden’s attempts to manage the economy.

2. This is because Americans’ are struggling against a badly-performing economy every day.

3. And Americans’ everyday economic struggles and suffering are obscured by strong national data.

How could anyone ever say all of these three things together with a straight face?

The first obvious question to ask is this: The nation is nothing but the aggregate of its citizens, and the national economy and its data is nothing but the aggregate of the economic circumstances of the people, so if people in aggregate are facing everyday struggles than the national economic data cannot be good, can it?

What answer does the FT Editorial Board give to this first obvious question? Word-salad:

The US is the world’s fourth-largest country by land area, and the third most populous…. National data is much less reflective of the economic reality on the ground, particularly given America’s vast income and regional inequalities…. Costs are still hitting many Americans hard, and by different amounts depending on the state…. Interest rate rises have also affected consumers and businesses differently…. Biden’s messaging risks negating the experience of voters on the ground…. The robust national economic picture may not even last until November…. If Biden continues to gloss over the local-level realities, he could end up looking even more detached…

Yes, America is a big country. But an average is an average: the average and the median are the two numbers that have the most claim to be truly representative of what is “reflective of the economic reality on the ground”, of the true “local-level realities”. Some will be below the average, by definition. But also some will be above the average, again by definition. There are situations in which distributions have pronounced skews, situations in which medians are much better guides to what is happening to the most people than averages are. But the Financial Times Editorial Board does not make any argument that the distribution of gains and benefits from the very rapid and very strong Bidenomics recovery has been skewed toward the few and against the many.

It does not make that argument because it cannot: it simply is not true.

When the Editorial Board does try to refer to bad-sounding numbers, what we hear is this:

The fear of losing one’s job over the coming year has risen notably among those on lower incomes…. Small businesses have been dialling back their hiring plans…. The share of Americans who have maxed out their credit cards is climbing, as are the numbers moving into delinquency…. Hiring is slowing and growth came in below expectations in the first quarter…

Notice a pattern here?

The chance of losing one’s job is low, but not as low as it was last year. Small businesses are planning to hire on net, but not to hire as many people as they were planning to hire on net last year. Almost no Americans were liquidity constrained while the plague-stimulus checks were still being cut back in 2021, and now more Americans are liquidity constrained. Total net hiring is positive, but not as positive as last year. The economy is growing—indeed, the IMF forecasts that the economy is growing at more twice the rate of any other G-7 economy and three times the other G-7 average—but it is not growing as fast as people were forecasting last December.

As my daughter says: If you do not like what a statistic says, try taking a derivative or an integral, and then you can refer to that and so pretend it says something else.

But that is not a good look at all.

What else does the FT Editorial Board have to say?

It says: while the economy is indeed strong, it may weaken over summer and early fall:

The robust national economic picture may not even last until November. High rates are increasingly biting the economy. Consumer confidence is dropping, hiring is slowing and growth came in below expectations in the first quarter…

This is true. But does it not count as an admission—admittedly, implicit only—of something not said in the piece? Does it not count as an admission that for most people—and not for a smaller proportion of people than is usually the case when the economy is doing well—incomes are growing, and that most people have seen a significant improvement in the amount of breathing-room in their budgets?

Yet that significant improvement in the amount of breathing-room in people’s budgets seems something the FT Editorial Board is desperate not to acknowledge. They do not say that nominal per capita incomes in America have grown by 23.5% over the past five years (with stronger growth among the poorer deciles) while (PCE-concept) total inflation has been a total of 18.2%, leaving a 5.3% increase in Americans’ average real income and hence budgetary breathing-room (again, more among the poorer quintiles). What they have to say is only:

Inflation may be easing but the overall price level is still around 20 per cent higher than in January 2021…. Inflation remains the biggest concern for voters, according to surveys. Food and rental costs are still hitting many Americans hard…. “Hand-to-mouth” households — which have large spending commitments compared with their regular income and assets — have had a tough time…

One does have to wonder why, when one ponders this lack of acknowledgement of the local-level realities of poorer-decile budgeting here in America. But by the time I got this far this lack of acknowledgement was not unexpected. It was part of a considerable list of substantially true, important, and relevant things said and substantially false things said, or strongly implied.

There is a final thread interwoven throughout the Editorial Board’s piece:

Biden’s approval ratings remain poor…. Touting aggregate numbers… can sound tone deaf…. Harping on… great headline statistics risks sounding out of touch…. Biden’s messaging risks negating the experience… on the ground… can raise doubts over his grasp…. That is not a good look…. Pinn[ing] higher prices on “corporate greed”… will not play well with business…. Getting the tone right matters… snippets can go viral…. Showing more empathy with struggling households would help politically…. Biden… could end up looking even more detached…

This seems to be tactical messaging advice to Biden’s political and media teams: Biden should focus on how many Americans are finding themselves in economic and budgetary trouble, even though very nice aggregate, average, and median statistics have been very gratifying proof of the effectiveness of Bidenomics. Biden should, it says, soft-pedal his good policy and good luck in improving the American economy as a whole, and thus improving the real on-the-ground life circumstances of Americans.

Biden should focus, the Financial Times Editorial Board says, on how many people still need the government to make their slice of the economy better, because some have been hurt and a lot have been unsettled by the relative and absolute individual price and price-level changes, even though those were necessary —the rubber-left-on-the-road as you rejoin the highway using a too-short onramp. They were necessary because they were the inescapable accompaniment of the rapid and successful post-plague recovery that avoided another lost half-decade of growth like the one we saw in the Obama years.

Implied in that judgment of the Editorial Board is an assumption that Biden can and should let others—others playing their positions—talk about how great the aggregate numbers are. And then they should talk about how, even though some have done (much) worse than average and others have done (much) better, the median is close to the average. And then they should talk some more about how the average, as far as the success of post-plague recovery is concerned, has been good, and is in fact best in the world.

This “playing your position”—in my memory, at least, I first came across the concept in early 1993 when I went to work for the Clinton administration Treasury as Deputy Assistant Secretary for… I think we settled on “Economic Policy” as I found myself doing both Macro and Finance as Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen assigned one of the three Economic Policy DAS slots to Marina Weiss as a newly-created Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy. George Stephanopoulos was complaining that policymaking in the Clinton administration had devolved into a soccer game of six year-olds: twenty players in a mob around the ball and two goalies. (Never you mind the identity of the chief six year-old back then.) Somebody. Roger Altman? Larry Summers? Ed Knight? Bowman Cutter? Bob Rubin? Someone… I really should remember… I thought it was important… Someone said that it was very important for the effective functioning of the government that we third-level political appointees play our positions, for if we played our positions the ball would eventually come to our issues, and then we would be briefed up, and as the only briefed-up people we could then be arrogant and convincing enough to actually kick the ball in the right direction and so contribute. But if we just joined the scrum, we would be in the wrong place when the ball came to our issues, would be frantically running to catch up, and never get to make a positive contribution as well.

Leave to one side all the false and fake pretending about how the claims that the American economy is booming are fake news: true “on the surface”, with “national data” not “reflective of the economic reality on the ground”. Suppose the Financial Times Editorial Board finds that it has the ovaries to write and publish first a correction, and then a version of the piece that is, you know, actually true. Suppose then we consider the value of the Editorial Board’s tactical advice to Biden and his political and messaging teams.

What then do we have to say?

So suppose Biden and his political and messaging teams do play what the Financial Times Editorial Board advises as their proper position. Then there is an obvious additional question: Who will play the position of informing America and the world how great the post-plague Bidenomics recovery has been, how close the median is to the average here—how for the first time since the Clinton boom of the late 1990s there has not been a pronounced plutocratic skew to American economic growth—and how for the overwhelming bulk of Americans, for the average, and for the median, there is now significantly more budgetary breathing room than there was five years ago: 23.5% total nominal growth and 18.2% total inflation leaving 5.3%—1.1% per year—for real income growth and hence expanded household budgetary breathing room. That 1.1% per year is less than we would wish. But it is, gratifyingly, much more than we would have had any reason to expect back in 2019 had we known how many of the Four Horsemen, how much in the way of plague and war and rumors of war and narrowly averted famine, was waiting for us.

Who will play the position of telling people the truth: that, on economic policy and economic outcomes, Joe Biden has been an astonishingly good and an astonishingly lucky president?

Isn’t that position—rather than giving tactical messaging advice—the proper position of the Financial Times Editorial Board?

It is true: read the reporters of the Financial Times, and you will get that vibe if you read closely, let the messages of those stories marinate, and reflect on (a) how much of the stories are good news, (b) how few are about Biden policy moves that have had disastrous consequences, and (c) how often there is a link between something has gone well and something the Biden administration did back in 2021 or 2022.

But suppose you were to confine your scope to the writings of the Financial Times Editorial Board. Would you get that vibe from it?

No.

I think there is a message here for the Financial Times Editorial Board: I agree that Biden and his political and messaging team should focus on the things that are today going wrong with the American economy and on his plans to fix them. But Biden and his political and messaging team can only play that position of the Financial Times Editorial Board and its ilk play their position as well.

And that is not what I see the Financial Times Editorial Board doing here.

So what it would gratify me to see, next week, and for the following five weeks, in order:

• An Editorial Board column on how great the post-plague Bidenomics recovery has been, especially compared to the post-2010 lost half-decade of growth.

• An Editorial Board column on how close the median has been to the average here—how for the first time since the Clinton boom of the late 1990s there has not been a pronounced plutocratic skew to American economic growth—and that the overwhelming majority of Americans have done and are doing very well compared to the state of things before the plague.

• An Editorial Board column on how, for the overwhelming bulk of Americans, for the average, and for the median, there is now significantly more budgetary breathing room than there was five years ago: 23.5% total nominal growth and 18.2% total inflation leaving 5.3% for real income growth. That is, gratifyingly, much more than we would have had any reason to expect back in 2019 had we known how many of the Four Horsemen, how much in the way of plague and war and rumors of war and narrowly averted famine, was waiting for us.

• An Editorial Board column on how close inflation is to the Federal Reserve’s target, and how great a thing it is that that has been accomplished without a recession.

• An Editorial Board column on how the Biden policies to reinvest in blue-collar America for national-defense, green-transition, building communities of engineering practice, and economic growth reasons appear to be substantially succeeding—and how Europe should not complain but copy.

• An Editorial Board column on how the technology-growth heart of the American economy—Silicon Valley—has and promises to continue to flourish under a Biden administration that understands both the potential and the dangers of MAMLM technologies, as opposed to a Trump administration that understands only kleptocracy and tax cuts for the rich.

An Editorial Board column about Trump’s disastrous plans to bring the Federal Reserve under his thumb would be welcome as well.

That would be the Editorial Board’s playing its position.

But—forgive me—I do not see the Financial Times Editorial Board doing that.

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Reference:

• Editorial Board. 2024. “Biden’s economic messaging is falling flat”. Financial Times. March 23. <https://www.ft.com/content/a9b82403-f36f-4fc0-882d-5a51cf49d4b7>.