NYT Puts Editorial on Deficit Reduction in News Pages

The fabulous Dean Baker takes on our "liberal" media at Beat the Press.--SS

NYT Puts Editorial on Deficit Reduction in News Pages:

Taking a cue from the Washington Post, the NYT ran an editorial on the budget deficit in its news pages. It told readers:

"At stake is not simply the country’s fiscal health, but also what remains of the government’s credibility. Without an agreement in sight, investors, business leaders and consumers, already worried about the deepening crisis in Europe, have begun to brace for the possibility of yet another blow to a fragile recovery, this time from Washington."

Is this a fact? The country's fiscal health is at stake? If the NYT reporters had access to the bond yields printed in their own newspaper they would discover that the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds fell by almost 1 percent on Thursday to 1.96 percent.

It seems pretty hard to maintain that investors are terrified about the fiscal health of the U.S. government if they are prepared to lend the government money long-term at less than 2.0 percent interest. They demanded 6.0 percent interest back in 2000 when we had budget surpluses and ostensibly serious people thought we would pay off the government debt in a decade.

This is not a news article. It is an opinion piece, and in fact a bad one. The writers/editors responsible obviously do not like the budget deficit and are trying to scare readers about its risks. This belongs on the opinion pages, not the news section.