Washington Post correspondent Juan Forero has a piece today (11/4/11) that attempts to compare the Greek economic crisis with other similar debt crises, particularly in Latin America. Unfortunately, he draws some misleading conclusions.

Forero's point is that there's a lot about Greece's problems that are reminiscent of troubles in Argentina and Uruguay just a few years ago. One country chose the right response, and the other is called Argentina:

In a story that may provide a lesson for Europe, one country, Uruguay, that was on the edge of financial oblivion organized a fast, orderly and negotiated response that revived the economy and ended a run on banks. Another, Argentina, spiraled into a chaotic default and remains a pariah in world financial markets.

Forero explains that Uruguay is now "a darling of Wall Street" (he means that in a good way) and boasts a fast-growing economy.  And what about Argentina, that pariah state? The news is grim--the government

still owes about $15 billion to hard-core creditors and has lost judgments in U.S. courts to pay up. With the country still blocked from tapping international capital markets, it is mostly because of booming demand for its agricultural products that Argentina has been lifted from economic calamity.

"Nobody recommends the Argentine approach to anything," said Arturo Porzecanski, a Uruguayan economist and professor of international finance at American University.

The Argentine people seem to think their approach is working--they just re-elected Cristina Kirchner, thanks in no small measure to the booming economy. As economist Mark Weisbrot wrote just before the election in the Guardian (10/22/11):

Since Argentina defaulted on $95bn of international debt nine years ago and blew off the International Monetary Fund, the economy has done remarkably well. For the years 2002-2011, using the IMF's projections for the end of this year, Argentina has chalked up real GDP growth of about 94 percent. This is the fastest economic growth in the Western Hemisphere--about twice that of Brazil, for example, which has also improved enormously over past performance. Since President Fernandez or her late husband Nestor Kirchner, who preceded her as president, were running the country for eight of these nine years, it shouldn't be surprising that voters will reward her with another term.

The benefits of growth don't always trickle down, but in this case, the Argentine government has made sure that many did. Poverty and extreme poverty have been reduced by about two-thirds since their peak in 2002, and employment has increased to record levels. Social spending by the government has nearly tripled in real terms. In 2009, the government implemented a cash transfer program for children that now reaches the households of more than 3.5 million children. It is probably the largest such program, relative to national income, in Latin America.

In short, the Post seems to be saying that it's better to be loved by Wall Street than to fall into an Argentine trap of growth and a substantial reduction in poverty.

Yesterday the New York Post--Rupert Murdoch's down-market tabloid, for those who are blessed to live beyond its circulation area--ran this front-page editorial demanding that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg shut down the Occupy Wall Street encampment to reclaim the city's "dignity":

Uhh.... that message would be coming from the paper that ran this dignified cover, waaay back in August:

And don't forget the Post's Iraq War weasels covers:

And why not this, while we're at it?

And let's not forget the paper's stellar work during the Anthony Weiner scandal: "Weiner Exposed," " Hide the Weiner," "Weiner: I'll Stick It Out" and "Obama Beats Weiner."

Today's Post cover, for the record:

Mr. Mayor, please return a sense of dignity to the proud city the New York Post calls home. At least until the next time the Phillies are coming to town.

Remember how the media all turned negative on Steve Jobs so soon after his death? Me neither.

But don't tell the New York Times. Today (11/03/11) the paper has a piece by Alex Williams pondering the speed with which the glowing tributes turned into something else--i.e., when "bloggers began their assault."

That assault, by Williams' account, consisted of things like this:

"Was Steve Jobs a Good Man, or an Evil Corporate CEO and Wall Street Shill?" asked a contributor on the Occupy Wall Street website.

Then, on the Forbes site, David Coursey, a technology writer, wrote an article called "Steve Jobs Was a Jerk, You Shouldn't Be," in which he suggested that Mr. Jobs might have been "a borderline sociopath."

That OWS blog assault started with this: "As most of us know, Steve Jobs is a great man...." And that Forbes piece was pretty nasty; it called Jobs  "a hugely successful genius who changed the world to be how he thought it should be. That is something only Steve could get away with and we are better off for it." Ouch!

The Times adds that  "the velocity with which Steve the Saint stories morphed into Steve the Sinner stories was striking."

Evidence? Here we go:

As for the mainstream press, it cleared its throat, straightened its tie and dived into the fray with the rest of them.

Five days after Mr. Jobs' death, the British news magazine the Week published a roundup of "anti-Jobs" stories. It included an essay titled "In Praise of Bad Steve" by a writer named D. B. Grady in the Atlantic ("Apple wasn't built by a saint. It was built by an iron-fisted visionary"); a 2010 investigation in the Mail in England into the "Chinese suicide sweatshop" where iPods are made; and an Op-Ed article in the New York Times by Mike Daisey, a monologist, who pounded Apple for what he saw as Orwellian tactics ("There is no tech company that looks more like the Big Brother from Apple's iconic 1984 commercial than Apple itself").

So a British magazine's roundup of "anti-Jobs" stories included one piece that was actually pro-Jobs, as its headline and the featured quote both indicate; an examination of Apple's manufacturing that came out the year before Jobs died; and a single op-ed in the Times. Does that really qualify as the mainstream media piling on?

It bears mentioning that even people who admire Jobs' achievements believe he was a fairly unpleasant person to work for--which is excused as another aspect of his genius.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's call for a referendum on the EU bailout package seems to have prompted media outlets to rummage through their store of Greek cliches.

The Washington Post's editorial against "Mr. Papandreou's ill-advised announcement of a referendum" led with a classical reference:

Not since the night when soldiers emerged from the belly of a giant wooden horse in ancient Troy has Greece engineered a more stunning surprise.

On the CBS Evening News (11/1/11), Mark Phillips weighed in with a culinary metaphor:

This was supposed to be the week that world leaders gathered in France to chart the next course of the economic battle. All through the week, the demonstrators gathered to tell them what they were doing wrong. Now the whole agenda has been tossed up in the air like a Greek salad.

Is that what people do with Greek salads? I thought it was plates they were supposed to throw around.

And on the Today show (11/2/11), CNBC reporter Mandy Drury skipped the imagery and just vented directly about how irritating she thought Greece was:

Yes, that news that Greece has called a referendum on its bailout scuttled stocks yesterday, and it looks like it could be a drag on stocks today as well. I know, it is so annoying that one small country could have that much of an impact on worldwide markets and indeed, essentially, your 401(k), but there you have it, our globalized and interconnected world.

On a happier note, though, starting today Starbucks is going to collect donations of $5 or more from customers in order to stimulate jobs through its Jobs for USA program. I guess that's just another reason to reach for the java, Natalie.

Well, thank goodness for Starbucks.

NBC's  Chris Matthews Show (10/30/11):

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Bob, tell me something I don't know.

BOB WOODWARD: That the White House has a secret plan to win the election and it's complex and it's secret, but it--look, Barack Obama wants to win so badly, as I understand it, everything in the White House is driven by the election and that level of commitment will take them to a point where he's going to show some leg in a way that people are going to say, wow, he really wants the job and this emotional connection could take place.

MATTHEWS: Wow. I do--I am impressed by that.

On the Meet the Press roundtable on Sunday (10/30/11), talk turned to Steve Jobs. And, as one might expect from the avalanche of hero worship that accompanied news of his death, the chatter concerned how we might all one day live up to Jobs' legacy.

Here's host David Gregory, speaking to Tom Brokaw:

Tom, it's interesting, author and journalist Jeff Greenfield tweeted recently about Steve Jobs the following: "Imagine a Steve Jobs in the auto industry, in healthcare, in energy, even in government. We'd have a different country."

We know from Walter Isaacson's biography that Jobs had some pretty strong views about how the government should work--specifically, he wanted to "break" teachers' unions, and praised the light regulatory burden on corporations doing business in China.

That certainly makes Apple more profitable. But consider this passage from the New York Times' review of Mike Daisey's monologue, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," about one Chinese facility:

While the official Chinese workday is 8 hours, the norm at Foxconn is more like 12 and even longer when the introduction of a product is at hand. One worker died after a 34-hour shift. Some of the workers he meets are as young as 13, and because of the repetitive nature of the labor, their hands often become deformed and useless within a decade, rendering them unemployable.

Back to the NBC panel, where Isaacson was using Jobs' legacy to underline a point in Tom Brokaw's new book:

ISAACSON: I think that painting a vision for the future, saying "Here's where the country really ought to go," we all know the broad outline, Steve Jobs knew the broad outlines, which is better jobs, skills for those jobs, and a chance for everybody to move up. (CROSSTALK) Well, I think that we all agree that there should be a fairer, flatter taxes...

GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

ISAACSON: ...but there should also be a reduction in the inequality in this country.

GREGORY: Right.

We all agree that there should flatter taxes? I don't think so.

And Apple, for the record, seemed to think it should pay no taxes:

Apple has made money so quickly and so prodigiously that it holds an outrageous $76 billion in cash and investments--an awesome sum thought to be parked in an obscure subsidiary, Braeburn Capital, located across the California border in Reno because the state of Nevada doesn't have corporate or capital-gains taxes.

If only such a company could dominate every facet of our lives, commercial and political.

On its Sunday front-page, the Washington Post published an incredibly dishonest attack on Social Security.

Under the headline, "Social Security Adding Billions to U.S. Budget Woes," reporter Lori Montgomery reported that "Social Security passed a treacherous milestone"--a moment where the program, largely because of the recession, spent more in benefits than it took in.

What does this mean? Montgomery tells readers: "Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury."

Montgomery complains that "fixing Social Security has largely vanished from the conversation" about the country's fiscal crisis, and politicians are "ducking the issue." She adds: "Many Democrats have largely chosen to ignore the shortfall, insisting the program is flush."

This is the kind of language one might expect in an editorial, where papers are normally free to take a position on an issue under debate. Here the Post is declaring in a news piece that politicians who do not believe Social Security is in a crisis are wrong.

Montgomery singles out Democratic Sen. Harry Reid for a fact check:

In an MSNBC interview, he added: "Social Security does not add a single penny, not a dime, a nickel, a dollar to the budget problems we have. Never has and, for the next 30 years, it won’t do that."

Such statements have not been true since at least 2009, when the cost of monthly checks regularly began to exceed payroll tax collections.

Economist Dean Baker weighed in at his Beat the Press blog (his takedown of the Post's propaganda is a must-read):

Of course Senator Reid is exactly right. The system is self-financed under the law. In 2009 it began drawing on the interest on the government bonds it held. That is exactly what the law dictates, when Social Security needs more money than it collects in taxes, it is supposed to draw on the bonds that were purchased with Social Security taxes in the past. This means it is self-financing.

Anyone in the mood for factchecking at the Post might want to focus less on Reid and more on their own reporter. Here Montgomery tries to argue that people get more out of Social Security than they put in:

The average worker spends 20 years drawing benefits. A quarter will see their 90th birthday.

As a result, the average retirees have gotten back far more in federal benefits than they paid into the system during their working life, according to research by Eugene Steuerle, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. That return is diminishing, in part because people today have paid more into the system than previous generations. But a two-earner, middle-income couple retiring this year can expect to get $913,000 in Social Security and Medicare benefits over their lifetimes, in return for $717,000 in payroll taxes.

Did you catch that? Montgomery switches gears from talking about Social Security to talking about the media's favorite underfunded safety net program, SocialSecurityandMedicare. Why? Because the research she's citing shows that the couple in question pays in more than it receives in benefits.

People who read the Washington Post know this--from a January 3, 2011, piece about this Urban Institute report:

The same hypothetical couple retiring in 2011 will have paid $614,000 in Social Security taxes, and can expect to collect $555,000 in benefits. They will have paid about 10 percent more into the system than they are likely to get back.

Montgomery needs readers to know that there are no politics involved here: "No crystal ball is necessary to predict Social Security’s future. Hard numbers tell the story." That's a pretty rich assertion coming from someone who's writing such a dishonest article.

Somewhat unhelpfully, deep into the article readers are told:

Social Security can pay full benefits through 2036. Once the trust fund is depleted, the system would rely solely on incoming taxes, and benefits would have to be cut by about 25 percent across the board.

Well that doesn't sound like much of a crisis anymore, unless you believe the money in the trust fund won't be paid back to taxpayers. Which is what Montgomery seems to be warning, since the alternatives are apparently so dire:

The $2.6 trillion Social Security trust fund will provide little relief. The government has borrowed every cent and now must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors to keep benefit checks flowing.

As Baker pointed out, this process is exactly what the government does when someone redeems bonds. The challenge for Social Security bashers is to turn these events into a crisis--and demand that citizens accept the idea that the government should not pay them back what they are owed.