Grayson Calls for White House Spokesman Gibbs to be Fired (LOL Alert)
If all politicians were this entertaining, the public might start sitting up and taking notice of what happens in DC.
Read more...Category Archives: Media watch
Frustrated White House Slams “Professional Left”
Stress will bring out an organism’s or an organization’s defenses, and the beleagured Obama administration is looking mighty defensive these days. The great unwashed public isn’t buying its PR about its supposed accomplishments, such as the disgrace that it misbrands as financial reform (which 80% are skeptical will prevent a future crisis) and health care […]
Read more...NYT Muffs Merrill/Magnetar Piece (Corrected and Updated)
By Yves Smith and Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive Update and correction 4:45 PM: We owe an apology to readers and to Louise Story of the New York Times, for an apparent error in our analysis. We have been informed that, remarkably, there were two separate Pyxis vehicles which were issued in […]
Read more...Why is the Journal Mystified that Some Employers Are Having Trouble Finding Workers?
The Wall Street Journal seems truly mystified that with headline unemployment at 9.5% and U6 at 16.5%, some employers are nevetheless having trouble filling jobs. But this shouldn’t seem all that strange when you consider that workers are not an undifferentiated mass, but have particular skills and experience, and live in particular places, and they […]
Read more...Did Gretchen Morgenson Get Spun on Denver Public School Financing Story?
Gretchen Morgenson is often a target of heated criticism on the blogosphere, which I have argued more than once is overdone. While her articles on executive compensation and securities litigation are consistently well reported, she has an appetite for the wilder side of finance, and often looks a bit out of her depth. Typically, she […]
Read more...More Debunking of the “Freddie and Fannie Caused the Crisis” Meme
There are a lot of bad things you can say about Fannie and Freddie: that they were part of the oversubsidization of housing in America, that they’ve had an overlarge side business of funneling cash to friendly politicians, that some of their “innovative” practices, like requiring the use of the electronic mortgage registration system, MERS, […]
Read more...Strategic Default Awareness Check
Thought I’d make a very crude effort to assess how much interest there is in strategic default, via looking at how often it comes up in Google searches versus other hot topics. Be sure to look at the left scale. Not surprisingly, strategic defaults is a new subject of interest: Some old and new pet […]
Read more...Iraq, intelligence and media manipulation – lessons from the UK
It occurred to me that this story might not get all that much mainstream air time in the US, for reasons that will become obvious. We’ve been having an inquiry into the background to the Iraq war over here. There was another enquiry back in the Blair era, Hutton, summarised by wikipedia: On 18 July […]
Read more...Summer Rerun: America: Banana Republic Watch
This post first appeared on May 6, 2007 I’m certain you’re familiar with the expression “death wish.” I am beginning to wonder whether America has a banana republic wish. The country has been taking steps towards being a small-minded, elite-dominated, sham democracy. Mind you, I am pointing to a tendency, not an established fact. The […]
Read more...Hopelessly optimistic techies
If only it was that easy. First sentence: “Pick up a piece of text and start reading and it usually becomes clear pretty quickly whether you’re reading a nonfictional news story or a fictional novel.” They lost me right there. Hat tip to Alea.
Read more...Is the SEC Settlement Really a Win for Goldman?
By Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive and Yves Smith A common fallacy is to assume that situations are polar: win/lose, black/white, hot/cold, heads/tails. But more often, given A, “not A” is not the opposite of A. Conventional wisdom in the financial media is that the settlement announced by the SEC over its […]
Read more...Backfire at “America Speaks” Propaganda Campaign vs. Social Security and Medicare
For those who did not catch wind of it, the Peterson Foundation, which has long had Social Security and Medicare in its crosshairs, held a bizarre set of 19 faux town hall meetings over the previous weekend to scare participants into compliance and then collect the resulting distorted survey data, presumably to use in a […]
Read more...Misnamed Financial Services “Reform” Bill Passes, Systemic Risk is Alive and Well
I want the word “reform” back. Between health care “reform” and financial services “reform,” Obama, his operatives, and media cheerleaders are trying to depict both initiatives as being far more salutary and far-reaching than they are. This abuse of language is yet another case of the Obama Adminsitration using branding to cover up substantive shortcomings. […]
Read more...The New Republic Lays on Hot and Heavy JP Morgan PR
I recoiled on the first reading of Noam Schrieber’s “The Breakup,” an account of the recently-cooled relationship between JP Morgan and the White House at The New Republic this week. And I don’t like it much better upon a second perusal. So much of the piece is devoted to uncritical recitation of pure JP Morgan […]
Read more...Banks Getting Worried About Rising Challenges to Foreclosures?
I’m not quite certain how to calibrate journalism American Banker style, but I found this article, “Challenges to Foreclosure Docs Reach a Fever Pitch,” (sadly, subscription only, e-mailed by Chris Whalen), to be both interesting and more than a tad disingenuous. The spin starts with the headline, it’s a doozy. The “challenge to foreclosure documents” […]
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