TALKIN' BOUT GROWTH. This is a great catch over at Dean Baker's blog (which TAP, I should remind you, now has the honor of hosting). Baker noticed The New York Times writing about Europe's 1 percent growth rate -- a pathetic, anemic figure, that supports all the conservative crowing about the failure of the social democratic system. Except that the NYT, for God knows what reason, reported Europe's growth only in quarterly terms, and never contextualized it into a yearly rate (the standard measure for growth). By contrast, even when relaying quarterly numbers, America's growth is always extrapolated into yearly terms (see here for an example). So non-economists -- which is to say, mostly everyone -- reading the NYT article would think Europe was pleased over a miserable one percent rate of growth when, in fact, the relevant number for comparison's sake would be 4 percent, nearly a full percent higher than America's average annual growth of 3.2 percent between 2002 and 2005.
--Ezra Klein
