Category Archives: Media watch

Business Insider Solicits, Then Refuses to Publish, Story on Suspicious Foreclosure-Related Death of Sunny Sheu

We first posted on the suspicious death of Sunny Sheu in June 2011. Our brief overview of the situation:

Quelle Surprise! Banks Getting Credit for What They Would Have Done Anyhow in Mortgage Settlement

Today, Joseph Smith, the official monitor for the Federal-state mortgage settlement entered into earlier this year with five major servicers, released a glossy initial report on program progress. Needless to say, my cynicism was piqued both by the glossy format of the document and the decision to release it well before the required date of second quarter 2013.

But the distressing part is the way the settlement is playing out according to script.

Ezra Klein Deems Joe Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and Elizabeth Warren (Plus Other Serious People) Not Credible

Ezra Klein demonstrated how far he’s has to descend into the Humpty Dumpty world of words meaning just what he chooses them to mean in order to defend failed Administration policies.

Lynn Parramore: Revealed – Romney Campaign’s Attempts to Deny Paul Ryan’s Insider Trading Don’t Add Up

By Lynn Parramore, a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet.

Team Romney wants you to believe Ryan didn’t really profit from privileged information. Don’t buy it.

Bill Black: “Budget Hero” – Public Media’s Most Despicable Financial Propaganda

By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives

We know that the supporters of austerity simultaneously urge us to reject “European socialism” while adopting the key European strategies that drove Europe into recession – twice. American conservatives assume that Europe must epitomize stringent financial regulation. The opposite is true. Europe adopted “light touch” financial regulation pursuant to neo-liberal economic theory. Its embrace of the three “de’s” – deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization was far more extreme than the United States. The City of London “won” the regulatory race to the bottom with the U.S. European’s adopted the full Basel II reduction in capital requirements without the minimum gearing ratio that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insisted upon. The FDIC prevailed over the intense, but fortunately unsuccessful opposition of the Federal Reserve economists who were the principal architects of Basel II’s disastrous reduction in capital requirements. The result was that European Union banks had roughly twice the leverage of U.S. banks and faced no meaningful regulatory restraints. The result was far larger real estate bubbles in several European nations (as a percentage of GDP) than in the U.S., multiple financial crises, and a Great Recession that reached depression levels in several nations.

Reuters Runs Interference for Elite Corruption, Scrubs Article That Shows How Banks Get Out of Jail Free

Marcy Wheeler put up a useful post yesterday morning, based on a Reuters article describing the efforts of Standard Chartered to combat the damage done by its making illegal transfers on behalf of Iranian banks.

Marcy picked up on how the article revealed the techniques used by big banks to escape suffering meaningful consequences of their misdeeds:

Standard Chartered Makes Empty Threat to Sue New York Regulator Over Iran Money Laundering

I have to confess I’m really enjoying the dust up between the New York Superintendent of Financial Services, Benjamin Lawsky, and his opponents, namely, his target, Standard Chartered, and the flummoxed Federal regulators that he is showing up as so deeply captured that they genuinely can’t tell regulatory theater from the real thing.

Project S.H.A.M.E.: The Recovered History of Adam Davidson

We are delighted to post the latest offering of Project S.H.A.M.E, a media transparency initiative led by Yasha Levine and Mark Ames.

Adam Davidson graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA in religion, and began his public radio career selling airtime and doing sponsor outreach. He then became an on-air radio personality, filing pro-Iraq War dispatches as Marketplace’s Middle East correspondent, and recently transformed himself into an effective propagandist for the banking industry. Over the years, Davidson has whitewashed the occupation of Iraq, praised sweatshop labor, attacked the idea of regulating Wall Street and argued for “squeezing the middle class”–all while taking undisclosed money from banking interests. No wonder Davidson shamelessly credited Wall Street for providing “just about anything that makes you happy.”

Barofsky v. Geithner and Administration Mouthpieces (Yglesias Edition)

Neil Barofsky continues to take issue with the Administration’s efforts to depict itself as the friend of ordinary Americans when its real loyalties are to banks. In a Reuters op-ed, he took on the hypocrisy of the Administration and its allies in their “fire DeMarco” messaging. If you are late to this row, Ed DeMarco, head of Fannie’s and Freddie’s regulator, the FHFA, nixed the idea of having his wards make principal reductions on mortgages, despite the fact that top mortgage industry analyst Laurie Goodman has ascertained they are far more successful than mods that don’t lower principal balances.

As various commentators, including yours truly, have pointed out, the criticism of DeMarco is sheer scapegoating.

Israel, The Bulgaria Bombings, and Iran

This Real News Network video highlights how the efforts to portray Iran as a moving force behind terrorist killings around the world have squat in the way of evidence behind them.

NYT’s Jackie Calmes’ “Grossly Inaccurate” Hit Piece on Neil Barofsky

It isn’t surprising that the knives are out. Former Special Inspector General of the TARP Neil Barofsky’s new book Bailout depicts the Treasury, where his effort was housed, as completely, hopelessly in thrall to the banks. While Hank Paulson at least seemed genuinely to appreciate the need for procedures and checks to protect taxpayers’ interests, Geithner chafed at any interference in catering to every whim of the financial services industry and used every bureaucratic trick at his disposal to undermine Barofsky.

Although Barofsky’s book has generally gotten very positive reviews, including one from the New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson last weekend, a rearguard action by Friends of the Administration was inevitable. And it has come in the form of a book review by a Washington reporter for the Grey Lady, one Jackie Calmes.

Doing Some Math on Fracking Propaganda

By reader bob of upstate New York, which is still frack free and fighting

A story by the Associated Press that tried to do some jusitsu on fracking critics, claiming they were guilty of the same practices they accused the industry of using, namely, using bad science, ironically, it included a pro-fracking example of the same.

Quelle Surprise! New York Times’ “Deal Professor” Ignores Facts and Law to Defend Citi Employee Stoker in SEC Toxic CDO Case Rakoff Highlighted

While the New York Times’ DealBook section generally hews to a financial-services-industry-friendly line, presumably as a Faustian bargain for being a preferred leakee, there’s not even a weak defense for the article by the New York Times’ so called “Deal Professor” Steven Davidoff, “If Little Else, Banker’s Trial May Show Wall St. Foolishness.” It’s yet another brazen effort to diminish the seriousness of rampant fraud by arguing it was just carelessness. But to make his case, Davidoff misrepresents both the facts of the situation as well as the law. Since Davidoff’s lawyer union card is an explicit part of his brand at the Times, this story amounts to another credentialed effort to run the “nothing to see here, it’s too hard to get these guys” line that has become the Administration’s pet excuse for not going after one of its biggest sources of campaign funds.