Parking Basel: A Case Study of How Banks Stymie Regulatory Reform
Basel III’s getting nowhere in the US.
Read more...Category Archives: Media watch
Shock Doctrine, American-Style: Hurricane Sandy Devastation Used to Push for Sale of Public Infrastructure to Investors
As a result of fully warranted bad press for some privatization deals, such as the lease of Chicago’s parking meters, there has been a bit (stress only a bit) more critical scrutiny of the de facto sale of public assets to consortia of private investors. Nevertheless, major banks have been using the financial distress of states and municipalities to push these deals as a solution to budget woes, when it’s a short-term expedient that leaves the public worse off.
Read more...Let Us Now Shed Crocodile Tears for Jon Corzine
With Hurricane Sandy dominating the news, quite a few business stories from early in the week got only cursory notice. In some ways, that’s not a bad thing.
The Wall Street Journal had a bizarre sequence of reports on Jon Corzine.
Read more...What Ex-Goldmanite Greg Smith Didn’t Say, and Some Guesses as to Why
Greg Smith’s book on his time at Goldman has generated a hailstorm of criticism, aptly summed up by Jesse:
Read more...But the absolute trashing and personal attacks on Greg Smith in the past week that were orchestrated by Goldman and supported, heavily, by the US financial networks got my attention. Generally ad hominem attacks are used by those who consider the facts of the case to be dangerous ground, and wish to do anything that they can to avoid discussing them.
Quelle Surprise! Sorkin Tells Remarkable Whoppers to Defend His Wall Street Sources
Andrew Ross Sorkin has a remarkable piece of hogwash masquerading as a story today. His new piece, “Nowadays, Wall Street Saviors May Wish They Weren’t,” blatantly rewrites crisis history claiming that buyers of failed firms were “pressured” by the government do transactions during the crisis and the Big Bad Government got the better of them.
Read more...More JP Morgan Whitewash
Via e-mail, some updates from Michael Crimmins, a bank compliance expert and member of Occupy the SEC, on the continuing failure of the media to portray the real significance of the JP Morgan London Whale losses: that it revealed glaring deficiencies in internal controls that warrant prosecution of Jamie Dimon under Sarbanes Oxley.
Read more...New York Times Story Bizarrely Downplays Impact of Ocean Acidification
The Grey Lady tonight, in true “newspaper of record” fashion, has an article that manages to acknowledge some of the effects of ocean acidification, and its links to global warming, while sidestepping how grim the implications are.
Read more...New York Times Profile of London Whale Boss, Ina Drew, Camouflages Dimon’s Risk Management Failures
A New York Times profile of Ina Drew, the former head of the JP Morgan Chief Investment Office, almost certainly produced high fives in the bank’s corporate communications office. This piece is the best sort of PR you can get: it treats the trading losses as yesterday’s news, of interest only as point of entre into the downfall of a heretofore unknown but once hugely successful and personally appealing trading manager.
Read more...On Combatting Trolls
Long-standing readers have noticed an increase in the amount of trolling in the comments section. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. As traditional broadcast media are becoming less important, both advertisers and PR firms are seeking to influence opinion and popular tastes through social media and blogs. Since I prefer to take a more hands-off approach to the comments section that other bloggers do, it puts me in a bit of a quandary. But the increase in orchestrated efforts to attack certain posts leaves me with no choice but to intervene more heavily.
The post last week from Project S.H.A.M.E. on Megan McArdle is an illustration.
Read more...Project S.H.A.M.E.: Megan McArdle, a Covert Republican Party Activist Trained by the Billionaire Koch Brothers
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.
Read more...Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Bad Math on AIG
Memo to Andrew Ross Sorkin: if you are going to try to discredit someone, it’s more effective if you are less obvious about it.
Read more...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:
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
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