Banking/Finance

Politico Doesn't Mind Obama Going Around Congress Again on Banker's Treasury Nomination
By Tom Blumer | January 12, 2015 | 6:49 PM EST

Well, they're nothing if not consistent.

When the Obama administration lost a court ruling against its ban on Gulf of Mexico drilling after the BP oil spill, it simply issued another ban. When it lost at the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case, it just issued a new rule which hardly differed from the one the Court nullified. Now, when it becomes clear that the administration won't get the nominee it wants, the strategy is to hire him or her anyway as a "counselor." Ben White at the Politico didn't address substantive objections to this latest tactic until the final four paragraphs of his 22-paragraph report (bolds are mine):

Charles Pierce: Conservatives Want America to Forget ‘It Elected (Twice) an African American Democratic President’
By Tom Johnson | December 13, 2014 | 2:32 PM EST

The Esquire blogger argues that anti-Obamacare lawsuits and an effort to weaken Dodd-Frank derivatives regulation are examples of how “the slow, steady and inexorable campaign to render this president a non-person in the long sweep of history continues apace.”

NBC Hails Elizabeth Warren as ‘the Liberal Wing’s Newest Star’; Blasted Cruz Over 2013 Funding Fight
By Curtis Houck | December 12, 2014 | 10:29 AM EST

During Thursday’s NBC Nightly News, NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Kelly O’Donnell heaped praise on far left Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), anointing her “the liberal wing’s newest star” as one of many to speak against the $1 trillion government funding bill being considered by Congress (which passed the House late Thursday night). 

When one goes back to look at the program’s coverage of the government funding battle in 2013 that led to a government shutdown, it had far different descriptions for one of the leading figures of that debate in Republican Senator Ted Cruz (Tex.).

Charles Pierce: America’s ‘Deliberately Cultivated Stupidity’ Would Doom an Elizabeth Warren Presidential Campaign
By Tom Johnson | October 31, 2014 | 1:14 AM EDT

The Esquire blogger Charles Pierce says Elizabeth Warren’s economic message is popular, but, for reasons that include a Republican “campaign of vandalism” and Democratic ineptitude, she doesn’t get the credit she deserves for it.

PBS Promotes Obama's Claim Country Has Improved ‘By Every Economic Measure’; Lou Dobbs Proves Otherwise
By Curtis Houck | October 2, 2014 | 10:43 PM EDT

Following President Obama’s speech on the economy on Thursday, the PBS NewsHour offered a 48-second news brief on the subject, in which co-anchor Gwen Ifill offered no opposing viewpoint to the President’s claim in his speech that “by every measure, the country is better off than when he took office.”

The show then played a soundbite of the President, in which he lamented that “millions of Americans don't yet feel enough of the benefits of a growing economy where it matters most, and that’s in their own lives and these truths aren't incompatible. Our broader economy, in the aggregate, has come a long way, but the gains of recovery are not yet broadly shared.”

NBC’s Williams Praises Global Warming Marchers Despite ‘Mountains of Trash Left Behind’
By Curtis Houck | September 23, 2014 | 3:52 PM EDT

During the Monday night newscasts of the major broadcast networks, both CBS and NBC provided coverage of the far-left global warming marchers in New York City who wanted to draw attention their liberal environmental causes and their disdain for Wall Street.

Leading the way in promoting them was NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who told viewers in a 25-second news brief that the “coordinated marches calling attention to climate change drew some huge crowds in big cities” and brushed off the fact that “nay-sayers” were citing the “mountains of trash left behind and the carbon footprint of the traffic jams that were caused by the march” as reason to criticize the hundreds of thousands marching.

Donna Brazile Approvingly Tweets Links to NB Post Ripping AP's Coverage of ‘Humming’ and ‘Rising’ U.S. Economy
By Tom Blumer | July 7, 2014 | 11:57 AM EDT

Donna Brazile apparently liked yours truly's NewsBusters post yesterday. That post ripped the Associated Press's Pollyanna-like coverage of the U.S. economy, and carried the following headline which may have caused several spilled drinks and soaked monitors among the genuinely informed — "AP: ‘Humming’ and ‘Rising’ U.S. Economy Is a ‘World-Beater.'"

About five hours after the post's appearance, Brazile tweeted her clear approval (HT Twitchy). While we appreciate any traffic which might have come this way as a result of Brazile's tweet, it's hard to imagine that Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign manager has switched sides. It's far more likely that she didn't bother reading the underlying post. The tweet follows the jump:

NBC's Roker Jokes Bill Clinton Should Have Punched David Gregory for Asking About Wealth
By Kyle Drennen | June 25, 2014 | 1:05 PM EDT

At the top of the 9 a.m. ET hour on Wednesday's NBC Today, weatherman Al Roker suggested in jest that his colleague David Gregory deserved to be punched in the face by former President Bill Clinton after the Meet the Press moderator asked Clinton in a recent interview about wife Hillary being "out of touch." Roker joked: "You know, I'd give anything if after David finished the question, Bill just kind of hauled off and popped him. Just see what happens." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Moments later, co-host Hoda Kotb rushed to the defense of the Clintons: "There are certain people who when you look at them you think that money is their issue and that's – they're entitled or whatever. You don't really think that when you think of the Clintons. It's not the first thing, I don't think, that pops into people's heads." Roker lamented: "I think we were all probably raised that you don't talk about money and how much people make. And it's unfortunate."

Establishment Press Ignores House Vote to Defund Operation Choke Point
By Tom Blumer | June 3, 2014 | 1:27 AM EDT

A month ago, I noted that the establishment press has ignored an especially pernicious program undertaken by Eric Holder's Department of Justice and the Obama administration's regulatory apparatus, namely Operation Choke Point.

On Thursday, a strong 321-87 bipartisan majority of the House passed H.R. 4660, the "Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (of) 2015." Among its provisions: "Sec. 554. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to carry out Operation Choke Point." The final bill's supporters included 204 Republicans and 117 Democrats. The establishment press has ignored the vote. Excerpts from Kelly Riddell's Friday coverage at the Washington Times follows the jump (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Tim Geithner Admits White House Told Him to Lie to Media, Charlie Rose Spends an Entire PBS Hour Avoiding the Topic
By Geoffrey Dickens | May 13, 2014 | 1:33 PM EDT

Charlie Rose invited on Timothy Geithner for the entire hour on his PBS show to plug his new memoir but never once asked him about the juiciest nugget in the book - that the White House told Geithner to lie to the media.

On Monday’s edition of PBS’s Charlie Rose show, the CBS This Morning co-host never got around to asking the former Treasury Secretary about his revelation that White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer pressured him to lie to the likes of Rose’s CBS colleague, Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer. (video after the jump)

Establishment Press Has Virtually Ignored DOJ's Pernicious 'Operation Choke Point' For Over a Year
By Tom Blumer | May 2, 2014 | 11:59 PM EDT

In June 2006, the New York Times, over strident pleas not to from the Bush 43 administration, published details of how counterterrorism officials were "tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry." According to the administration, the program had "helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia." Other outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, which were apparently on the brink of breaking what the Times reported first, also chipped in with their own supplements. The stories received prominent network TV coverage, and reinforced the image of the Bush administration as secretive and far less than transparent.

So the details of how the government was monitoring the operation of the world's financial system to obtain clues to help catch terrorists apparently deserved full exposure. If that's fine, why has the press been barely interested in a far more troubling development, namely Eric Holder's U.S. Department of Justice using pressure on the financial system to conduct "a massive government overreach into private businesses that are operating within the law," which has been going on for at least a year? Welcome to "Operation Choke Point."

MSNBC’s Hayes, Guest Fawn Over Sen. Warren, Suggest Presidential Run
By Paul Bremmer | April 24, 2014 | 4:38 PM EDT

There’s a slow but steady drumbeat of support building up in the media for an Elizabeth Warren presidential run, and MSNBC is playing a huge part in it. On Wednesday’s All In, host Chris Hayes chatted with Esquire’s Charles Pierce about what makes Sen. Warren (D-Mass.) so great. Hayes began the interview by asking, “[W]hat is it about Elizabeth Warren that people love so much? There is some quality that is bringing something out in people.”

Pierce, who wrote a profile of Warren in Esquire, made a flattering comparison of the senator’s speaking style to that of an iconic liberal president. He exclaimed that “she gets the same effect out of ‘golly’ that Lyndon Johnson used to get out of curse words.”