Banking/Finance

If exaggerated reports of global economic distress act to further dampen consumer confidence and actually worsen the situation, can press outlets be held legally liable?Such was espoused by a corporate lawyer Thursday in response to a poll that found 77 percent of Americans "think the financial press is making the economic crisis worse by projecting fear into people's minds."As reported by…

Ever since the financial services industry totally melted down in September, anti-free market media have pointed an accusatory finger at deregulation as the primary cause of bank, brokerage firm, and insurance company failures.Yet, as press outlets across the fruited plain deal with declining revenues and layoffs, some believe a looser anti-trust environment could be the solution.Even more…

Well, it seems that the folks at Vanity Fair realized that they won't have George W. Bush to kick around any more. So they decided to launch the journalistic equivalent of thermonuclear war against him in an attempt to get its shot at a "draft of history." In a 14 web-page tome (the photo at the top right is at its beginning) that fancies itself an "oral history," the magazine hauls out every…

Looking for your own financial bailout?Well, the unprecedented decline in gasoline prices the past five months is actually giving regular Americans a much-needed boost to their balance sheets possibly greater than what the government is doling out to the financial services and automobile industries.New data just released by the Oil Price Information Service reveals that we're currently spending $…

This is really delicious, and should cheer up the grinchiest of Grinches and the scroogiest of Scrooges:Rumors that Santa Claus may be the latest and most high-profile victim of the worldwide credit crisis sent world stock markets roiling and children's hopes plummeting today as Wall Street analysts warned that Santa's entire production and distribution network could collapse by the end of the…

The roundtable on Monday night's Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC was not kind to the New York Times's hit piece on Sunday's front page that blamed President Bush and only Bush for the mortgage meltdown, ignoring the Democrats in Congress who protected the irresponsible push for more "affordable housing" by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (as Times Watch noted yesterday). Nina Easton, Washington…

 This is a timely op-ed from Dan Gainor of BMI.Christmastime is the time of giving. So we can thank Bernie Madoff for giving Americans some special gifts this holiday season.Yes, I said thank him. OK, maybe not a lot. But the one-time financial wizard's downfall is a morality tale that provides so many lessons it's almost impossible to know where to start. If you've been living under a rock, the…

UPDATE AT END OF POST: White House issues statement concerning "Irresponsible Reporting by New York Times."It's official: the housing and financial crisis gripping the nation is President George W. Bush's fault.So said the New York Times Sunday in a 4900-word, front page hit piece entitled "The Reckoning - Bush's Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire."And what was this heinous, catastrophic…

On December 18, in an item that appeared on Page C1 of its December 19 print edition (the graphic at the right is a scaled-down version of what appears at the top of the online version), the New York Times's Wendell Jamieson provided us his perspective on what has became a Christmas staple, Frank Capra Jr.'s "It's a Wonderful Life." I would suggest that the piece reveals a lot more about the…

Full disclosure, you can take the day off. CBS's "The Early Show" included a statement in its Dec. 18 report on the Big 3 bailout from "auto industry analyst," Dan McGinn. Letting the massive car companies fail "would be like 10 Katrinas hitting America at the same time," McGinn asserted. "The American public understands that." What the report didn't say is that McGinn is also an adviser…

In a softball profile of the liberal Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank on Sunday’s CBS 60 Minutes, anchor Lesley Stahl led with: "Barney Frank has been called the smartest guy in Congress, which is lucky for us, since he works on some of the thorniest issues around. The 14-term, 68-year-old Harvard-educated Democratic congressman from Massachusetts is chairman of the House Financial Services…

The proposed automaker bailout has a big stamp on it that says "union-built," but the news media hasn't noticed. Over the past month, accusations have been flying against several Southern senators who oppose a $14 billion bailout for the beleaguered big three automakers and support the the alternative of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. These senators, critics say, are representing the interests of…

As Americans across the fruited plain worry about their jobs and how they're going to make ends meet during the current recession, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman showed Sunday morning just how separated from reality and the common man he actually is.Appearing on ABC's "This Week," the New York Times columnist said that he wasn't worried about how expensive president-elect Barack Obama's economic…

The wires services and the rest of the Old Media have also been reporting on a scandal that doesn't have to do with Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich. But, like the Blago story line, the media seem to be forgetting one small aspect of the story of Wall Street rip off artist Bernard Madoff. Like Blago, Madoff's connections to the Democrat Party seem to be of little interest to the media. Very…