WSPD show recap - Sept. 26, 2012

Here are the links to the subjects we discussed Wednesday on 1370 WSPD:

* Bacon shortage?!? I'm stockpiling.

link to story

* Lucas County jobless rate lowest since '08 is headline in the local paper...but the actual numbers show something different:

Link to Ohio statistics website

Link to Ohio Labor Force Estimates

Employment numbers - not the unemployment rate - is the statistic we should watch.

205,900 was the Lucas County employment in May 2008.
192,900 was the Lucas County employment in Aug 2012.

Even though unemployment rate is low, there were 13,000 more people working in Lucas County back in 2008.

131,200 was the Toledo employment rate in May 2008.
119,800 was the Toledo employment rate in Aug 2012.

Even though there was only a difference of 200 in the number unemployed in Toledo when you compare May 2008 to August 2012, there are 11,400 people NOT working in August than were working in May.

The picture might be slightly better, but the headline is based on distorted numbers and the real truth of the job situation is revealed when you look at the number employed.

* Mayor Mike Bell doesn't like the presidential candidates bashing China in Toledo when he's holding an economic forum for dozens of Chinese investors on the same day.

Link to story

Note Councilman Joe McNamara's comment at the end of the story and then check out page 7 of this report from Ohio which shows that employment, compared to last year, in the categories of Motor Vehicles and Motor Vehicle Parts is down 1,400 and 1,000 jobs, respectively.

* With President Barack Obama touting his tariffs on Chinese tires, it's important t know it didn't really do anything to help the American tire market. The article has the details

Link to story

* Fritz Wenzel of Wenzel Strategies revealed the inside story about the latest New York Times/CBS/Quinnipiac poll which shows Obama leading Romney by 10 points.

Podcast of interview is available here.

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Peter Brown, assistant director of Quinnipiac Polls, who said that "it is probably unlikely" that Democrats will turn out to the polls in the margins at which they are reflected in the polls. Here is the link to the blog post.

* Jason Hart of Media Trackers Ohio talking about his investigations into the personal biases behind the so-call objective fact-checking that PolitiFact supposedly does.

Podcast is available here.

Additionally, I referenced a series being done by Ohio Watchdog that checks the fact-checkers at PolitiFact and finds much of it is fiction.

Here is the lastest post in the series, "OH: PolitiFact claim in Brown ad refuted by PolitiFact" with the earlier entries linked at the bottom of the story.

Thursday Show:

We'll talk about the letter Mike Rowe, Dirty Jobs, sent to Mitt Romney and what it means in terms of future jobs. Also, Andrew Marcus, the writer and director of the soon-to-be released movie, "Hating Breitbart."

Do they even know the definition of a recession in order to be polled?

I came across this latest story by CNN about their polling of American's perspective of the state of the economy.

"WASHINGTON (CNN) — Nearly half of Americans feel the U.S. economy is in a recession, marked by a significant decline in economic activity, according to a survey released Thursday.

The poll by the CNN-Opinion Research Corporation found that while 46 percent of Americans hold that belief, 51 percent don't."

The article does define what constitutes a recession, but offers no explanation of whether or not such definition was read to those polled prior to asking their opinion.

InvestorWords.com offers the following defintion which is a bit easier to understand:

"A period of general economic decline; specifically, a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters."

Interestingly, 2007 second quarter GDP growth was 3.8%, which is an increase over the first quarter growth of .6% (source). Obviously, with an increase between first and second quarters of 2007, we do not have a decline 'for two or more consecutive quarters.' In fact, according to this chart from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (did you even know it existed?), GDP has shown growth in every quarter since the third quarter of 2001 (based on chained 2000 dollars).

About two weeks ago, there was a interesting discussion on Swamp Bubbles about the economic figures that had just been released. The question I asked, which remains unanswered, was 'if these are bad numbers, what do they have to be to indicate a 'good' economy?' Most people judge an economy by their own personal perspectives often attributing the overall economy to be indicative of their personal situation. Some believe that they're doing okay, but based upon stories and news reports, think their neighbors are having a tough time, contributing to the subjective perspective of the economy as a whole.

And that discussion, combined with this poll, makes me wonder why we even bother to conduct such polls. It's clear that if 46% of those polled think we're in a recession, they do not understand how a recession is defined and are thus 'unqualified' to offer an opinion. If we polled economists, those who are supposed to be 'experts' or at least authoritative on the issue, would they say the same thing as the "public"?

So what is the purpose of such polls? And why is that no one asks qualifying questions before asking one's opinion and then extrapolating that into what 'America' thinks?

UPDATE: a rather succinct perspective on WHY 46% think it's a recession is available here.