Banking/Finance

Back in the fall, you would have thought from the media coverage of the TARP debate and its eventual passage that some sort of crime had been committed when the House didn't pass it the first time around. "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric demanded to know from House Minority Leader John Boehner, "What in the world are you people doing?" on her Sept. 29 broadcast. However, there was a side…

Despite all the criticisms of the Fox News Channel broadcasted on MSNBC for promoting tea party coverage, one thing hasn't been pointed out - how the NBC networks, including CNBC and MSNBC are given a pass for their shameless promotion of their Green Week and Green is Universal network events. Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large for National Review and author of "Liberal Fascism," appeared on Fox…

CNN's Susan Roesgen has had a rough week, what with all the ordinary American/First Amendment practitioners bashing she so passionately and obnoxiously delivered in her TEA Party reporting.Perhaps it was the sniping at the place she twice applied in 2005 - Rupert Murdoch's House of Ratings, otherwise known as Fox News - that put her over the edge.Or whether or not her email box was so overwhelmed…

CNN's Susan Roesgen, whose anti-TEA Party pseudo-reporting made her a legend in her own mind, and a biased Obama-flack hack in ours, is in the news on her own (de)merit again today.One peculiar line from one of her peculiar rant-filled reports was that the TEA Parties were being "anti-CNN" because they were "highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox."Well it turns out she wasn'…

While Fox News has celebrated the Taxpayer Tea Party rallies and MSNBC has denigrated them, the impetus of the movement - CNBC and specifically Rick Santelli, its inspiration - had been conspicuously quiet about it. But on CNBC's "Squawk Box" April 15, co-host Joe Kernen asked Santelli what he thought of being a "cultural phenomenon." That was the same show Santelli famously called out President…

MSNBC prides itself as being the place for politics, the seemingly clever marketing slogan could be used to describe the network as the place where hosts try to use dirty humor about important political events. David Shuster, filling in for MSNBC loose-cannon Keith Olbermann on his April 13 broadcast, and his writers probably thought they were pretty clever when they pieced an item denigrating…

Even before a single bag of tea has been dumped as a form of protest over government economic policies, the gang at MSNBC is in full-attack mode over the notion these protests merit any recognition. On MSNBC's April 10 "Countdown," fill-in host David Shuster imitated his MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow's juvenile and overdone description of the tea party protest to disparage the upcoming…

I got this e-mail yesterday from CNN shortly after Uncle Sam's Monthly Treasury Statement for March was released: That was indeed a serious piece of news. Only halfway through the year, the federal government's deficit for fiscal 2009 is already larger by far than any previous year's deficit. So I was curious to see how the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger might work this story to minimize…

It's hard to find an upside to the continuous drumbeat of bad economic news. But on April 7, MSNBC host and Obama cheerleader Rachel Maddow felt compelled to try. "There is a silver lining here, maybe," Maddow said. "As horrible as the jobs numbers are and as pessimistic as executives across the country appear to be - Americans broadly speaking are actually sort of increasingly optimistic these…

She's been popping up in a lot of places lately to chime in on the economy.  This time Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington appeared on ABC's April 5 "This Week," where she voiced her disapproval of the March 30 decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) relaxing mark-to-market accounting rules. "This week, we saw so many concessions to the banks," Huffington…

Will There Be a Corresponding Media Call to Pitchforks?Please don't halt respiratory activity in the waiting. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are two public-private partnerships known as Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs).  Wherein the executive staff, populated with woefully unqualified, egregiously overpaid political crony appointees, get to play housing market roulette with the House's (read: OUR…

With the G20 meeting in London, there have been raucous protests - clashes with police in riot gear, destruction of property at nearby banks and even the death of one man from a heart attack. And the media have gone out of their way to cover every sordid detail. To former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the media's flag-to-flag coverage of the G20 protests are a glaring contrast to the…

It's no secret the Bush administration used fear tactics to push the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) through Congress last fall. Both members of the House and the Senate have come out after the fact and disclosed the details. However, the method the Treasury Department employed to get banks to go along with the TARP bailout breached legal boundaries to the point of "extortion…

Just a few short months ago, New York Times' liberal economics columnist Paul Krugman had high hopes for new President Obama and urged him to act like "Franklin Delano" Roosevelt.But even the billions of dollars in government spending to fix the financial crisis, efforts to limit executive compensation and the recent ouster of General Motors CEO haven't pacified Krugman.According to Newsweek's…