Mostly wrong, most of the time.

According to the Murdoch rag the economy is going down, bigtime

HARVEY Norman chief Gerry Harvey has warned that retailers face a "shocker of a Christmas" as unemployment creeps up and consumer confidence sags in weak domestic conditions.

"Retailers will have the hardest Christmas in their lives," said the boss of the country's biggest electrical and furniture chain .

"I see unemployment going up, small businesses going under, manufacturing under huge duress and tourism hit very badly. I don't think the outlook will improve."

Recent data on retail spending would challenge populist forecasts of grim times ahead; from Citi and Chris Joye

The retail sales data shows that household consumption to date in Q3 was not as adversely affected by events of the past few months as some of the leading indicators suggested. For the RBA, this means that the CPI and labour force data may have to exhibit a clearer pattern of softening outside of any global deterioration to deliver a November interest rate cut or that any imminent rate cut could be by 25 bps rather than 50 bps.

Retail sales data surprises on the upside for the second consecutive month. Retail sales increased by 0.6% in August, well ahead of the consensus estimate of 0.2%. In addition, the July 0.5% increase was revised up to 0.6%. These changes pushed the yearly growth rate to 2.1% from a revised 1.5% in July and stabilised the trend growth rate from falling further (Figure 2). The better than expected results show that Australian consumers do not share the pessimism of consumers in some other nations."

What is becoming more clear is that the only business that is "a shocker" is the news business - particularly that of the Murdoch empire;