PressThink Thu 2010-06-24 10:18 EDT

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right: On the Actual Ideology of the American Press

Jay Rosen

That it's easy to describe the ideology of the press is a point on which the left, the right and the profession of journalism converge. I disagree. I think it's tricky. So tricky, I've had to invent my own language for discussing it...political journalists...are skeptical about changing society in any fundamental way...professional journalist...generate authority and respect...flee opprobrium...[by demonstrating] that they are not on anyone's ``team,'' or cheerleading for a known position. This puts a premium on stories that embarrass, disrupt, annoy or counter the preferred narrative...``True believer,'' a term of contempt...narcissistic reactions of both sides prove how mature and professional and detached he is...people with political sense in press treatment will usually be the moderates, mavericks and ``pragmatists,'' a word that in political journalism has almost no content beyond, ``opposite of true believer... ideologically flexible... not a purist.''...journalists try to win the argument not by having better arguments but by standing closer to a reality they get to define as more real than your reality...The Church of the Savvy...The Quest for Innocence...Regression to a Phony Mean...The View from Nowhere...He said, she said journalism...The sphere of deviance...

actual ideological; American press; clowns; jokers; left; PressThink; Right.

zero hedge Mon 2010-05-24 16:38 EDT

Presenting What Could Be The Oddest Capital Flow Observation In History

It is no secret that the last few weeks saw massive liquidations along all asset classes. The result was a huge outflow across almost all products: Loans, HY Bonds, Municipals, Commodities... all a typical reaction to broad based liquidations. However, note we said "almost" - one class that actually posted a $6.2 billion inflow was equities. Yet not is all as it seems: peeking underneath the hood indicates that the bulk of this inflow, or $10.3 billion, had to do with inflow into ETFs... or rather, just one ETF - the SPY, accounting for $10.1 billion. Did someone prop up the entire equity market last week by massively pushing capital into the most liquid equity proxy available?...

History; Oddest Capital Flow Observation; presenter; Zero Hedge.

Mon 2010-05-24 10:11 EDT

Hussman Funds - Weekly Market Comment: Don't Mess with Aunt Minnie - May 24, 2010

John P. Hussman

...Last week, we observed an Aunt Minnie featuring a collapse in market internals that has historically been associated with sharply negative market implications....Treasury Secretary Eddie Haskell/Timothy Geithner has scheduled a trip to Europe this week to urge European leaders "to pay better attention to potential market reactions to policy moves, and to accelerate the European rescue program." This promises to be a fiasco. What could European leaders possibly find more arrogant than to be lectured on bailout policy - not simply by the U.S., but specifically by a one-trick pony bureaucrat whose chief trick is the ability to smoothly talk the language of prudence while simultaneously pillaging the fiscal stability of an entire nation for the benefit of bondholders who made bad loans?...Providing Greece (and possibly some of its neighbors) a graceful exit from the Euro requires greater courage but lower ultimate cost - particularly to the citizens of Greece itself - than a policy of forcing heavy austerity, dislocations, and internal deflation within Greece. The effect of austerity policies will be to damage the revenue side of the Grecian economy enough to leave the deficits little changed in any event. One would like to go back a decade in time and choose different policies that would have allowed Greece to maintain the Maastricht deficit limitations, but it is far too late to push a full-grown genie back into an itty-bitty bottle...

2010; 24; Aunt Minnie; Hussman Funds; Mess; weekly market comments.

Jesse's Café Américain Sun 2010-05-09 08:30 EDT

Guest Post: The Perils of Credit Money Systems Managed by Private Corporations

Jesse

...The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain.The corporations which create the paper money cannot be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business. And when these issues have been pushed on from day to day until the public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given; suddenly curtail their issues; and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium which is felt by the whole community. The banks, by this means, save themselves, and the mischievous consequences of their imprudence or cupidity are visited upon the public. Nor does the evil stop here. These ebbs and flows in the currency and these indiscreet extensions of credit naturally engender a spirit of speculation injurious to the habits and character of the people...Recent events have proved that the paper money system of this country may be used as an engine to undermine your free institutions; and that those who desire to engross all power in the hands of the few and to govern by corruption or force are aware of its power and prepared to employ it... Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

Credit Money Systems Managed; Guest Post; Jesse's Café Américain; peril; private corporations.

Jesse's Café Américain Thu 2010-01-07 19:07 EST

Class Warfare American Style

Jesse

Matt Taibbi's reaction to the ZeroHedge story with regard to Turbo Tim's lifting of the government support on Christmas Eve for the GSE's was exactly my own. You can read it in its entirety here. What he does not overtly say is that this is class warfare, and it is becoming worse in the US than at any time since the 1930's. And the outcome of this will be a fundamental test of the US commitment to its republic. The media stokes the viewing public into emotionally-based and virulently distracting arguments about liberal versus conservative, while the gentried class skins them all alive.

Class Warfare American Style; Jesse's Café Américain.

Sun 2009-10-11 18:07 EDT

Cassandra Does Tokyo: Mourning Rally

...it is most curious that I should find myself experiencing very visceral negative reactions to the upward movements in the gold price...the rallying Gold price signifies more monumental failures at multiple levels for society, in politics, for nations, for our individual and collective ability to measure our wants and desires with our means. So despite my skeptical exoskeleton about most things (financial innovation perhaps first and foremost), the aforementioned bothers me intensely, for I am, at heart, both an idealist, and a closet optimist about humanity...So when I see Gold rally, my visceral reaction is the result of my incredulous beliefs confronting contrary evidence, and the mourning for said failures (both real and imagined) that it represents.

Cassandra; Mourning Rally; Tokyo.

ClubOrlov Wed 2009-08-26 14:22 EDT

That Bastion of American Socialism...the United States military

kollapsnik

Over the past few months the American mainstream chatter has experienced a sudden spike in the gratuitous use of the term "Socialist." It was prompted by the attempts of the federal government to resuscitate insolvent financial institutions. These attempts included offers of guarantees to their clients, injections of large sums of borrowed public money, and granting them access to almost-free credit that was magically summoned ex nihilo by the Federal Reserve. To some observers, these attempts looked like an emergency nationalization of the finance sector was underway, prompting them to cry "Socialism!" Their cries were not as strident as one would expect, bereft of the usual disdain that normally accompanies the use of this term. Rather, it was proffered with a wan smile, because the commentators could find nothing... ``Since the end of the Civil War, Americans have become accustomed to thinking of war as something that happens elsewhere, to other people. Thus, the news that the US is bombing this or that land, for no adequate reason, killing and maiming numerous civilians, produces in us neither the normal human reaction of revulsion, nausea and disgust, nor the conviction that we must take the fight to our own monstrous leaders, lest we too become monsters. Life under domestic military occupation might bring home some welcome realizations, and start Americans down the long road of atoning for the sins of their forefathers, who have run roughshod over much of the rest of the planet for far too long.''

American social; bastion; ClubOrlov; United States military.

Tue 2009-06-16 00:00 EDT

China's ``dollar trap'': Lessons from France's 1920s ``sterling trap'' | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

China's "dollar trap": Lessons from France's 1920s "sterling trap" | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists; ``Frances sterling trap ended disastrously. Sterling suffered a major currency crisis, French authorities lost a lot of money, and subsequent policy reactions deepened the Great Depression.''

China's; commentary; Dollar Trap; France's 1920s; leading economists; Lessons; research-based policy analysis; sterling trap; Vox.

Thu 2007-12-06 00:00 EST

Calculated Risk: The Plan: My Initial Reaction

"New Hope Plan" to forestall foreclosure examined

Calculated Risk; initial reaction; plans.