Banking/Finance

PBS’s Jim Lehrer forwarded several questions with a clear leftward tilt during an interview with President Obama on his Newshour program on Monday. He urged the executive to “crack heads” to get his health care plan passed, and inquired if “taxing the wealthy” was an option to fund it. Lehrer later pressed Mr. Obama on the “huge profits” being made by “big Wall Street banks.”The PBS anchor led…

Noel Sheppard mentioned this Associated Press story by Tom Raum yesterday at NewsBusters (Raum is tagged as the writer at this version of the report).Noel characterized Raum's report as suggesting that "the White House's delay in releasing an update about the budget might be tied to the administration's desire to get controversial bills on healthcare reform and cap and trade passed before…

Today Joe Biden was in Alexandria, VA, and said, as reported by CNS News:People look at me and say, "What are you talking about, Joe? You're telling me we've got to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?" The answer is "Yes,"I'm tellin' ya.Matt Drudge thinks this is news (link is to his time-stamped archive, which won't change); it is his top headline. Allah at Hot Air thinks it's news, as…

In a report meant to cover Uncle Sam's release of June's Monthly Treasury Statement, Associated Press reporter Martin Crutsinger went well beyond the wire service's normally lazy, slanted reporting in this area.In his report's apparent final incarnation early Tuesday morning, the AP writer:Told us the amount of June's deficit ($94.3 billion), but didn't disclose the figures for June's receipts ($…

If you listened to any top-of-the-hour radio newscast yesterday, you probably heard that General Motors has exited from bankruptcy, with the company promising to really, really do better this time around.You more than likely didn't hear anything about how much government money it has taken to enable GM to survive and reemerge. That's because original story sources like the Associated Press put…

Maybe reporters Brian Faler or Nicholas Johnston at Bloomberg asked Barack Obama some really challenging questions when they had a chance to interview the President at the White House. Maybe they even did some basic fact-checking. If so, there's precious little evidence of either in their June 16 report.They allowed the president to blame most of the current year's deficit on George W. Bush. They…

Journalists, take note: Dylan Ratigan should be your model.Despite working for MSNBC, Ratigan has shown a hard-nosed, take-no-prisoners interview style that is quickly gaining him the reputation for being the toughest interview on television.  It isn’t often that an MSNBC host can claim to be tough on both sides of the political aisle, but the former CNBC correspondent could probably do it with a…

First the federal government's auto bailout bullies came for Chrysler's secured, first-lien creditors, and defeated them.Then they came for General Motors' unsecured bondholders. The feds appear to be in the drivers' seat in shafting them disproportionately to force a better deal for the United Auto Workers' healthcare trust.Now, in a matter that at first only seemed to interest the Wall Street…

It's pretty hard to dress up a disaster as something less than that, but the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger gave it his best shot in his report yesterdayabout Uncle Sam's the May Monthly Treasury Statement, in effect understating the amount and significance of federal government's rapidly deteriorating financial situation.With the help of dubious handling of last year's stimulus payments in…

Should it be the role of the government to determine what amount of risk is appropriate in the private sector? President Barack Obama could have been interpreted as suggesting that much in comments he made about TARP repayments on June 9. CNBC's Rick Santelli responded to those comments earlier in the day from Obama, "that those who seek reward do not take reckless risks." Santelli said on CNBC'…

Ed Frank created an interesting little video that serves as a stark reminder of how harsh the Old Media was on Bush's "faltering" economy in comparison to today's hearts and flowers style of reporting during the age of Obama, even though the stats are far, far worse under Obama than they ever were under Bush. Frank's video is shocking for its revelation of how Bush was slapped around and how…