Headlines that Lie, Film at 11 pm.

The latest news headlines (and why a lot of it is just a big FAT lie !) :

1. Economy adds 290,000 jobs, rate rises to 9.9 % (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/business/economy/08jobs.html) It is always easy to think about the country / economy as a whole and to report it that way. The problem is that we are not a national economy, we are a bunch of regional economies. What this headlines should say is "Economy adds 290,000 part time low paying jobs to replace full time higher paying jobs. Millions lose benefits as unemployment compensation finally run out." At least it would be accurate that way.


2. Regulators look to soothe market's raw nerves (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6463NP20100507) The financial reporters always talk about "the markets" like they are a single organic piece of a larger instrument. Realistically 2/3rds of all trading done in this country is automated and executed by computer. What the headline should actually say is "Rich people make tons of money by selling stocks when price is high, prices fall as stocks sell off." They come up with all these so called reasons for stock price variations and truthfully, the price wouldn't move a bit if every executive in every public company in the USA wouldn't run their companies based upon the short term share price.


3. Apple's iPad in short supply at companies' stores (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-07/apple-ipad-in-short-supply-at-company-s-retail-stores-update1-.html) What this headline should say is "Strategy to keep iPad price artificially high is working." No , it isn't in short supply. This is a myth being foisted upon the public by Apple and the tech writers. Factually, they projected a demand well in excess of what they have actually sold. Then in order to keep the price high, they (Apple) managed the production capacity down to near short levels. This creates excitement and thus demand, which "DUH !" inflates prices. We have saw the exact same thing with the original X-Box, the X-Box 360, the iPod, the iPod player and every other game system and video device in the last ten years. Who they think they are fooling anyhow ?
4. BP lowers dome in effort to catch oil. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703338004575229864184350730.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird) What it should have said was "BP doesn't have a clue how to stop oil leak, they are now going to try the old rug on top of the stain trick." This may actually work who knows? It strikes me as very odd though that you can drop a 110 ton steel box on top of an oil leak, and the oil will not float the box upward because of hydrodynamics. I'm guessing they thought of that but does this seem uh, surreal to you?
5. Iron Man 2 rakes in 7.5 million on early Friday. (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3iea8f9cfddb155917db3f5d86f8183f6f) What it should have said was "Producers continue to release meaningless numbers in hopes of selling more tickets." Now in the interest of full disclosure, I saw the first Iron man and plan on seeing this one too. I like movies and watch a lot of them. The problem is that all of these "Sales records" they talk about with movies is a made up numbers with no standard for comparison to any other movie. Here's why. Suppose Movie "A" comes out and makes 100 Million dollars, Movie "B" comes out and makes 75 million dollars. Following the logic of the headlines of the story it only makes sense to say that movie "A" was a hit, sold more tickets, made more money whatever right ? The answer is , well, it depends. What if Movie "A" is released on 4000 theatre screens and Movie "B" is released on 2000 screens ? Movie "A" made an average of $25,000 per screen and Movie "B" made an average of $37,500 per screen. On this basis Movie "B" is doing better, isn't it? This doesn't even take into account cross merchandising, logo branding, video games, the cost of making or distributing the movie and a thousand other measurements. The total value of a release over a weekend (or whatever time frame) is meaningless unless you have some standard way of comparing it to other films.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

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