I think people are genuinely surprised by the corporate media's shift on Occupy Wall Street: Things went from apathy, scorn and derision to front-page news rather quickly.
USA Today's editorial today (10/12/11) is headlined "Five Good Reasons Why Wall Street Breeds Protesters." It has the usual caveats–"The protesters' rhetoric against capitalism and 'corporate greed' is over the top, and they seem devoid of remedies," the paper notes–but on balance, the message is that there's plenty to protest.
What's galling is the sense that USA Today's been outraged all along. As when they explain:
Through lobbyists and campaign contributions, the banking industry has long had its way in Washington. This was evident in the Clinton-era legislation that repealed a post-Depression safeguard and allowed banking behemoths to combine banking and brokerages under one roof.
Boy, was it "evident," right? Remember all of those USA Today editorials denouncing the Glass-Steagall repeal? Neither do I.
In fact, this (4/9/98)is what the paper had to say about the removal of that "post-Depression safeguard":
It is nevertheless clear that banking laws designed for an economy 65 years ago don't work as well now. The goal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act was to keep banks separate from insurance and securities firms as a way to protect banks.
But the law has weakened banks. They've lost ground at home and abroad to more flexible foreign financial firms.
Responding to this concern, the Federal Reserve Board over the past decade used its authority as regulator of bank holding companies to chip away slowly at the Glass-Steagall wall, giving banks more leeway to set up securities subsidiaries. The Fed has gone about as far as it can under the law. Congress has to tear down the rest of the wall.
As lawmakers remove obstacles to the brave new world of finance, they must take care not to leave the consumer behind.
About a year later, the paper (11/18/99) wrote that the repeal of Glass-Steagall was one of the few accomplishments of that congressional session:
On the eve of adjournment, after nearly 11 months in session, incumbents can point to only one major accomplishment: passage of compromise legislation overhauling Depression-era restrictions on banks, insurance companies and the securities industry.
If only we had listened then to what USA Today is saying now.
About Peter Hart
Occasionally stating the bleeding obvious does not an honest news source make, does it?
Corpress outlets will publish and air valid intel in an attempt to maintain credibility – usually incompletely, and qualified to high heaven – then return to the task of obfuscation and outright prevarication.
And just as what they say today may contradict what went before, what they put out tomorrow will likely vitiate whatever reality they presently acknowledge.
Well, I guess I just stated the bleeding obvious as well, didn't I?
[...] http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/10/12/usa-today-finally-people-are-protesting-wall-street/ . [...]
If only George Orwell were here to sue USA Today for copyright infringement, vis-a-vis "1984"…
Insert usual Gandhi quote here.*
Mind you, the media's superfast transition through the four stages Gandhi talked about has been a bit like watching Homer Simpson pass through the five stages of grief.
* ("First they… etc")
The corporate media always rehabilitates themselves before the public by racing to the front of whatever direction the parade seems to be moving today, hoping most people can't Google previous contrary positions once held, banking on the fact that for the many, yesterday lies beyond their event horizon.
"Devoid of remedies" eh?
http://movetoamend.org <– take that!
Yo Chet! Bingo!
Im gonna start a corporation that makes shirts that say occupy wall street.Im gonna make 50 million.Pay shit loads of taxes.Then Im gonna retire.
@michael e: How delightfully pithy, O rapier wit!
Do you have something to add about the thread topic? Which is, to refresh your memory, how USA Today is whitewashing its previous endorsement of de-regulation.
If you wanna rail against the occupy wall street movement, feel free. There are several threads here where it would be a propos. However, this thread is far more related to the "journalism" of USA Today.
Here's a tip: just 'cause something says "occupy wall street" doesn't necessarily mean it's about the protests. This is, after all, a website about reporting. Remember… the "R" in FAIR? Also, be careful in the future: just 'cause an article has the word Canada in the headline does NOT mean that you can expect to be able to discuss the Habs checking line.
Love the Habs checking line reference John.Funny
As far as the actual article by USA ….today of course it is crap/Starts out by saying in effect that the recession is due to wall street.That is such a politically motivated statement .The left is working overtime to place it up there as their easy scapegoat.No fanny and freddy.No Clinton and Reno.No spending by the government right and left.Just pissed that some are making so much while so many fail.
The paradigm is shifting from conservative versus liberal to corporations versus democracy.
The middle east had it's Arab Spring. We are having our Wall Street Fall.
@michael e: So your prescription for USA Today's crappy journalism is to parrot a right-wing talking point? A talking point that most economists dismiss as speculative and/or disengenous? A talking point that the Bush's own council of economic advisors found entirely unconvincing as a significant contributor to the financial crisis?
That's your advice: Take 2 talking points and call me in the morning? Best stick to medicine, doc.
John again you make statements as if they are gospel…. based on what?There is no economist alive -right, or left, who does not see the massive impact of the things I mentioned in the financial crisis.Wall street was guilty of crony capitalism(not capitalism) undoubtably.But to absolve Franks and Dodd,Clinton and Reno ,and government spending to name but a few -is to hide your head in the sand.My" prescription"to Mr Franks was to stop fanny and Freddy before it collapsed ,and brought the country with it.For two years prior I did talks explaining the failing mechanisms.I also guessed that government would blame wall street.Anyway….He told me that all was well.No need to yell the sky is falling.It was well funded and the right thing to do.When he dies at the ripe age of 100(God willing)may that be written on his gravestone.Followed by one word… nincompoop!You say i parrot the right.You sir parrot the alibis designed- to absolve some seriously guilty people.People Obama put back in charge of rebuilding the financial system they helped destroy.
Well, John, there it is, in all it's narcissistic, lying, imbecilic, full beauty. The first line alone carries all the proof you need about this troll's numbskullery, no? the rest is just rancid icing on the fetid cake. Don't say I didn't warn ya. Best advice: Don't feed the trolls, or you get the above, over and over.
Umm… michael e, you're the absolute last person who should be complaining that someone else is posting something as gospel without sourcing. However, I'll humor you: my sources include the Levin-Coburn report and Paul Krugman's writings on the subject. The Levin-Coburn report is itself heavily sourced. I do believe that Paul Krugman is still alive, so that would make your statement about "not one economist alive…" completely inaccurate.
There has been much written about the causes of the financial crises. Many economists do not agree about it. You're suggesting that it was clearly or primarily due to Clinton, Reno, Fannie, Freddie et al. That suggestion is highly controversial within the economic community– witness the writings of Paul Krugman and the sources he cites– and was dismissed by the Republican President and his CEA– witness the Levin-Coburn report and its sources. The only place where your assertions are as proven as you want them to be is in your own mind. Smarter minds than you or I, guys and girls who do this for a living, haven't been able to distill it down to the certainty that you put it out there to be. For a newspaper to do so would be irresponsible at best– unless it was in an editorial or something.
And we're 'sposed to believe that a guy who can't even find the space bar with both hands and a flashlight pointed this out years before, huh? Sorry, not buying that one. You may well have predicted it in your "talks". (By the way, I thought you were a doctor or something; shouldn't you be, ya know, keeping up with continuing medical education instead of pontificating on economics?) But all that makes you is a lucky guesser; you don't get to hold yourself out as a moneymaking genius just because you hit the lottery. We've had this conversation before. It ended with you refusing to provide any sort of source/link for these "predictions" you made in your "talks". So I'll say it again, Nostradamus: these imaginary predictions/talks you speak of sound awesome!
And I didn't say you parrot the right. I said you're advocating that a newspaper parrot the right. There's a huge difference.
Jeff Madrick and Frank Partnoy note that it was Wall Street, not the GSEs (Fannie and Freddie), that fundamentally caused the 2007â┚¬“2008 crisis, which was driven not merely by a headlong pursuit of easy profit but also by ethically dubious practices.
The GSEs bad investments in housing loans followed rather than led the crisis; most of those investments involved purchases or guarantees made well after the subprime and housing bubbles had been expanded by private loans and were almost about to burst.
Even then, the GSEs\' overall purchases and guarantees were much less risky than Wall Street\'s: their default rates were one fourth to one fifth those of Wall Street and other private financial firms.
In Addition, the GSEs never bought the far riskier collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that were also rated triple-A and were the main source of the financial crisis.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), which was appointed by Congress to investigate the causes of the crash concluded that Fannie and Freddie were not the main causes of the crisis.
A further review of other literature shows that Bill Clinton\'s goals to increase â┚¬Ã…“affordable lendingâ┚¬Ã‚ had little to do with the risks the GSEs took.
I think this is good time to organize the people and
Boycottforjobs.com has a clear objective and a simple approach to put America back to work
Sharethword
Their data(boycottforjobs) is correct,but the method they mean to employ is not.Not buying at McDonalds will only force them to "entrench" more.Relieve their tax burden(now the highest in the world)and they may come home.Give them reason to believe that stability has returned to the levels of government interference, and they may feel free to make moves.They have made hay by doing exactly what needed to be done during these times of recession, and Obama.Don't fault them for it.
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