First, Larry Ribstein became NY Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson’s worst nightmare by exposing the vacuous nature of her columns.
Now, Felix Salmon has become part-time NY Times business columnist Ben Stein’s worst nightmare (see also here) in much the same way:

Stein’s main point is that reality is fine; it’s just the media which is making things look bad. “Newspapers (which often sell on fear, not on fact) talk frequently about a mortgage freeze,” he says. Although if you do a Google News search on “mortgage freeze”, you find exactly one newspaper article: this one, by Stein. Meanwhile, he says, and I swear I am not making this up, “there is still a long waiting list for Bentleys in Beverly Hills”. Well in that case there couldn’t possibly be a housing crisis!
“This country does not look like a country in economic trouble,” concludes Stein. Well, maybe if you live in Beverly Hills and you have lots of money invested in the stock market, then that might seem to be the case. But Stein doesn’t seem to consider that most Americans might not fall into that category.

Read the entire post. Do the Times editors even review Stein’s blather before publishing it?