QOTD2, Mooney: In this context, finding common ground will be very difficult. Perhaps the only hope involves taking a stand for a breed of journalism and commentary that is not permitted to simply say anything; that is constrained by standards of evidence, rigor and reproducibility that are similar to the canons of modern science itself.
atrios on Losing Money
I've read a few stories like this, too. It seems that for whatever reason (perhaps their perceived obligations in servicing agreements), banks are finding it preferable to sell foreclosed homes than to accept short sales. And they're selling the foreclosed homes in bulk to investors for less than what they could've gotten in the short sales.
small clipping, you should go read the whole Rich Op-Ed if you haven't already.
Frank Rich: Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived?
A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: “President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.”
Six weeks ago I wrote in this space that the country’s surge of populist rage could devour the president’s best-laid plans, including the essential Act II of the bank rescue, if he didn’t get in front of it. The occasion then was the Tom Daschle firestorm. The White House seemed utterly blindsided by the public’s revulsion at the moneyed insiders’ culture illuminated by Daschle’s post-Senate career. Yet last week’s events suggest that the administration learned nothing from that brush with disaster.
Otherwise it never would have used Lawrence Summers, the chief economic adviser, as a messenger just as the A.I.G. rage was reaching a full boil last weekend. Summers is so tone-deaf that he makes Geithner seem like Bobby Kennedy.
...
Another compelling question connects all of the above: why has there been so little transparency and so much evasiveness so far? The answer, I fear, is that too many of the administration’s officials are too marinated in the insiders’ culture to police it, reform it or own up to their own past complicity with it.
The “dirty little secret,” Obama told Leno on Thursday, is that “most of the stuff that got us into trouble was perfectly legal.” An even dirtier secret is that a prime mover in keeping that stuff legal was Summers, who helped torpedo the regulation of derivatives while in the Clinton administration. His mentor Robert Rubin, no less, wrote in his 2003 memoir that Summers underestimated how the risk of derivatives might multiply “under extraordinary circumstances.”
Given that Summers worked for a secretive hedge fund, D. E. Shaw, after he was pushed out of Harvard’s presidency at the bubble’s height, you have to wonder how he can now sell the administration’s plan for buying up toxic assets with the help of hedge funds. It will look like another giveaway to his own insiders’ club. As for Geithner, people might take him more seriously if he gave a credible account of why, while at the New York Fed, he and the Goldman alumnus Hank Paulson let Lehman Brothers fail but saved the Goldman-trading ally A.I.G.
As the nation’s anger rose last week, the president took responsibility for what’s happening on his watch — more than he needed to, given the disaster he inherited. But in the credit mess, action must match words. To fall short would be to deliver us into the catastrophic hands of a Republican opposition whose only known economic program is to reject job-creating stimulus spending and root for Obama and, by extension, the country to fail. With all due deference to Ponzi schemers from Madoff to A.I.G., this would be the biggest outrage of them all.
Last Sunday, former Vice President Dick Cheney offered some odd and factually-challenged criticism of the White House. This Sunday, President Obama responds.President Obama has hit back at former Vice President Dick Cheney, calling Bush administration policy on detainees at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, "unsustainable."
"How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?" Mr. Obama said Friday in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on "60 Minutes" on CBS.
The president was responding to recent charges by Mr. Cheney that the administration's decision to shut down the Guantánamo prison, along with other policies on the treatment of terrorism suspects, would make the United States more vulnerable to attacks.
Bush administration terrorism policy "hasn't made us safer," Mr. Obama said, according to excerpts of the interview released Saturday. "What it has been," he continued, "is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."
On a related note, Time's Bobby Ghosh reported the other day that Cheney's recent vitriol "has left many in Washington wondering if it was about more than just protecting his legacy."
Several observers think Cheney may be starting to feel the heat from Democrats' efforts to investigate the Bush Administration's counterterrorism policies -- policies Cheney advocated, and for which his proteges allegedly provided the legal basis. But if he was trying to deflect attention from Bush-era policies, Cheney's aggression will likely have the opposite effect. "If his goal was to tamp down talk of a truth commission, he has probably exacerbated the problem," a veteran Republican told TIME.
I'm a little skeptical of this -- talk of investigating the Bush administration's alleged crimes seems to have more heat than light. For that matter, Cheney ddoesn't need an excuse to take cheap shots at Obama; it just comes naturally. I'd pass this along, anyway, just as an FYI.
Benen finds THE EQUIVALENT OF A CORRECTION....
George Will's recent commentary on global warming sparked an interesting controversy, not just over Will's errors of fact and judgment, but also on the reluctance of a major media outlet to correct mistakes, acknowledge missteps, and prevent these kinds of errors from taking place.In Will's case, the Washington Post published a seriously flawed column about a pressing international crisis, and rejected calls for a correction. Yesterday, however, more than a month after Will's column first ran, the Post ran a related op-ed from Chris Mooney.
A recent controversy over claims about climate science by Post op-ed columnist George F. Will raises a critical question: Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real conclusions of science and how to distinguish them from scientific-sounding spin or misinformation?
Congress will soon consider global-warming legislation, and the debate comes as contradictory claims about climate science abound. Partisans of this issue often wield vastly different facts and sometimes seem to even live in different realities.
In this context, finding common ground will be very difficult. Perhaps the only hope involves taking a stand for a breed of journalism and commentary that is not permitted to simply say anything; that is constrained by standards of evidence, rigor and reproducibility that are similar to the canons of modern science itself. [...]
Readers and commentators must learn to share some practices with scientists -- following up on sources, taking scientific knowledge seriously rather than cherry-picking misleading bits of information, and applying critical thinking to the weighing of evidence. That, in the end, is all that good science really is. It's also what good journalism and commentary alike must strive to be -- now more than ever.
Mooney proceeds to expose Will's demonstrable mistakes -- in an exceedingly polite way. Mooney doesn't make any assumptions about Will's intentions; he just explains why Will's observations were factually wrong.
It's not quite the same as the Post running a correction, or better yet, holding Will responsible in some way for his distortions, but at least Mooney's piece sets the record straight, and makes the case for more reliable coverage of these issues in the future.
Matt Yglesias added, "Mooney can't really bring any of that stuff up and point out that George Will is an enormous liar, because to do so would lead naturally to the point that it's grossly irresponsible of The Washington Post to keep running his columns. And if you do that, you can't get published in The Washington Post! So good for Chris -- it's a good piece -- but it's still a rotten system."
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