When "Spin" is a Sin

Here they go again! Big black headlines in the Merc this morning...20 Years After Black Monday, What if it Happened Today? and Home Sales Plummet 40% in the Bay Area. The implication is that stocks could drop by 22% as they did in the market collapse of 1987. So then what happens this morning? The Dow Jones, at an all-time high of nearly 14,000, drops almost 300 points. The NASDAC falls by 55.
Sue McAllister says in her article that "Wary buyers and a shaky mortgage market slammed the brakes on Bay Area home sales in September, which reached the lowest level of any September in the past two decades"...scary stuff, but true. It's the negative emphasis that I object to, especially since a chart on page two shows that although sales are down from last year, the median price in Santa Clara County is up 5.4% from last September. Also hidden in the second page is Richard Calhoun's comment that the market in Silicon Valley remains skewed, with our more expensive areas dramatically outperforming cheaper ones.
But so many people read just the headlines...