Bloomberg Plays Key Role in Dumbing Down America, Playing One Side of the Issues
Oct 29, 2010
Author: SCP Editor
October 29, 2010 - Why is the general public so under-informed, and susceptible to Wall Street and the GOP’s opposition to the Obama administration’s economic policies? There is no silver-bullet answer, but a large part has to do with how broadly the mainstream financial media is painting the administrations’ policies with a negative brush.
Case in point – this morning on Bloomberg, Betty Liu, interviewing former Treasury Secretary John Snow, who we admittedly have criticized in the past as being slightly more than competent but definitely ill-prepared for the job under George W. Bush’s administration, cited a Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize winning economist) Op-Ed piece in the NY Times: “
If the Republicans control the House, we will get the worst of both worlds. They will refuse to do anything to boost the economy now, claiming to be worried about the deficit while simultaneously increasing long-run deficits with irresponsible tax cuts.”
The interviewer added, rhetorically and indignantly, ‘irresponsible tax cuts’ almost in disbelief, and in a tone totally writing off Krugman’s assessment, which we think is totally correct
Bloomberg is a key financial news outlet. It is critical to most of us working in the financial services industry. It is supposed to be a bit less bias than CNBC’s Squawk Box and is definitely less so than the fair and balanced offering of Fox. But here it is, the most ‘objective’ of financial news sources we have to watch, pushing an agenda, which is, in our opinion totally short-sighted, based in greed, and chalked with an attitude and economic philosophy that is quite possibly going to inject much more systemic risk into the economy.
Granted our take is debatable. But let’s have the debate. Bloomberg doesn’t want to. Here it is before election week pushing a loaded political agenda and not offering up a champion with an opposing view to provide a forum for better informing its audience of the issue from a more holistic standpoint. It doesn’t even offer up a straw man.
Instead, we get fed John Snow’s response, almost robotic, that, “Well, you know, it seems to me that the important task of the next Congress is to make sure we don’t get a tax increase. A tax increase at this time would be disastrous when the American economy is underperforming as much as it is now, and unemployment is as high as it is.” Snow took the opportunity then to make a pitch for the more competent new faces, the opposition to the administration’s policies, which are queued up to take their new seats on the heels of next week’s elections.
And ever the leading questioner, Liu re-emphasized “And if that happens Mr. Secretary, then you are confident that this tax issue will be resolved and we won’t get the tax cut that you say is disastrous, right?” Wink-wink. In rhythm, Snow added, “Well I think it would be disastrous” and that the new leaders poised to come to Washington as a result of next week’s election will put us on a better course. Liu asked for a description of what “disastrous” means in Snow’s mind, with Snow responding that “we could easily have a double dip recession, absolutely, that’s what we are talking about. We are talking about the economy getting worse rather than getting better.”
The only thing missing in this interview is a ‘we support this message’ from the GOP.
We know why the GOP is hostile to Obama’s policies. It is really just a partisan disposition. But why is Wall Street so hostile? After all, since inauguration day of the Obama administration, the S&P 500 is up 39.3%. That is pretty solid performance. Contrast that with the performance on Wall Street under the Bush W. regime – down 36.7%.
Nevertheless Wall Street, the financial media and the proxy for business in the U.S., the Chamber of Commerce, are all calling for a redux of GW policies. What gives?
