Flawed Economics On ABC

Diane Sawyer's appearance last night on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News Factor program demonstrated that economic fallacies remain widespread and embraced by media personnel who are in a position to influence masses of Americans.

I'm speaking of Sawyer's/ABC's 'buy American' push, in the mistaken belief that it is the best way to further its explicit aim of trying to find jobs for unemployed Americans.

Sawyer was on O'Reilly's program ostensibly to answer questions regarding ABC's liberal bias in the 2008 presidential election, and its putative continued bias in the 2012 election cycle. I won't bother with Sawyer's platitudes on that topic.

Instead, of interest was her turning the conversation to some feature on its news hour where the network apparently tries to compete with The Ladders or Monster.com, connecting unemployed Americans with jobs.

Sawyer went on to challenge O'Reilly to conduct an audit of his home to discern how many items were not 'made in America.' Then compounded her idiocy by wondering aloud which was 'more American,' a GM vehicle or a Toyota vehicle, both of which were assembed in the US?

David Ricardo must be spinning in his grave. Haven't Sawyer and O'Reilly heard of Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage?

So now, along with O'Reilly's misinformed belief that high oil prices are always the result of immoral speculation and manipulation, we can add his apparent tacit approval of beggar-thy-neighbor trade practices and outdated economic thinking.

As for Sawyer and ABC, can't someone like John Taylor, Alan Reynolds or Nouriel Roubini take her to task and end the domestic preference nonsense on that network?

Perhaps counsel them to dump the amateur-hour job placement charade and use their media pulpit to argue for lower tax rates and less government intrusion into the private sector, thus providing more money and less uncertainty, which would facilitate private investment, GDP and, with it, job growth?