Antisemitism and This Recession: The Dog That Didn't Bark

Jewish Daily Forward article "Antisemitism and This Recession: The Dog That Didn't Bark" (March 24th, 2010) speaks of how this recession is an exception, in that a connection between individuals who practice Judaism and economic downturns is normally made. Corrections suggests that if anything, the opposite is the case, and that Jewish bankers are mentioned when GDP goes up, but bankers in general are mentioned when GDP goes down.

With unemployment stuck at about 10%, and few expecting this to change anytime soon, we are still suffering the effects of a cataclysmic recession, one that seems to have its origins, in good part, in the nation’s financial institutions. Not surprisingly, Jews have pricked up their ears, waiting for the howls of the antisemitic hounds.

Corrections used Lexis-Nexis to find any mentions of "Jewish Banker" since 1976 in major global news sources. We used Google's news search to find news articles on "bankers" over the same period. Google's news search was used because Lexis-Nexis had too many results to count for "banker." We expect our results to be robust to this methodology. We then compared the difference in mentions of Jewish bankers to difference in log GDP. If an decrease in U.S. GDP was met with a increase in the mentions of "Jewish Banker" in news sources, we expect there to be a negative correlation between them. To make sure there was a connection between bankers and GDP at all, we also used our Google search. We display the results graphically below.

First, we have U.S. GDP and the number of "Jewish Banker" mentions in Lexis-Nexis over time (click to enlarge).



Second, we have the difference in log GDP against the difference in number of mentions of "Bankers" (click to enlarge).



Finally, we have the difference in log GDP against the difference in number of mentions of "Jewish Bankers" (click to enlarge).



As it turns out, the correlation between difference in log GDP and difference in number of mentions of "Jewish Banker" is .0053. The correlation between difference in log GDP and difference in the number of mentions of "Banker" is -.0328. This would suggest that while "bankers" are mentioned more in times of low GDP, "Jewish Bankers" are mentioned more in times of high GDP.

The Forward claims that this is a recession was a case of "the dog that didn't bark." Corrections would first ask to see the dog; in order for it not to bark, it had to exist in the first place. As the only evidence on the table is weak evidence that there is reverse-discrimination, a Correction appears to be in order.