Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Hoocoodanode?

Dean Baker has a short piece on the hypocrisy of the mainstream corporate media (in this case, the Washington Post) in their economic reporting.
The point is extremely simple. There was a huge housing bubble that should have been visible to any competent economic analyst. The bubble was fueled by an enormous chain of highly leveraged finance. (As head of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson personally made hundreds of millions of dollars from this bubble.)

It was entirely predictable that the housing bubble would burst and that its collapse would have a huge impact on the financial system and the economy as a whole. There is zero excuse for Paulson being caught by surprise by a "storm" that he helped create. The Post should not be in the business of covering up for Paulson's massive failure.
The Post piece is a fawning bit of hagiography on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, which fails utterly to address the fact that as CEO of Goldman Sachs, Paulson himself had a direct role in creating this mess we are in. And made $500 million, cash money, by doing so.

Talking Points Memo also caught the Post fawning starry-eyed this morning.

Why do people still buy these newspapers?

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