September 17th 2008
Media Bias #62
WaPo Turns A Blind Eye
Not surprisingly, John McCain is focusing on the economy in the wake of Freddie, Fannie, Lehman, Merrill Lynch and AIG. Even less surprisingly, the liberal, Obamedia are trying to cut his legs out from underneath him. Take this morning’s Washington Post. Please.
McCain Embraces Regulation After Many Years of Opposition
A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.
The story goes on to highlight two bills McCain was involved in. One deregulated telecommunications. The horror! We all have nice cheap cell phones and a galaxy of plans to choose from, and thus far, Wall Street’s meltdown hasn’t been blamed on the abundance of cheap telecommunication technology.
(Note to WaPo: You’re missing the story on how McCain caused the Metrolink crash!)
The other highlighted bill is the The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. Note how McCain’s name is not in the bill? Curious. Oh, he just “joined with other Republicans to push through” the legislation. Damning enough. Quoting WaPo here, the bill “aimed to make the country’s financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.” A terrible idea apparently. Our banking system should have stayed in the Depression-era so other countries could take away our mantle as global financial leader, and all the needless growth America has enjoyed since 1999 could have been circumvented.
Not mentioned anywhere in the story is the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which McCain didn’t just “help push through,” but actually sponsored. It proposed establishing an independent Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Agency with authority over the Federal Home Loan Bank Finance Corporation, the Federal Home Loan Banks, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac).
The bill would have restricted some of the cavalier behaviors that have hurt Freddie and Fannie by applying risk-based capital tests, imposing new enforcement actions and penalties, limiting golden parachutes and requiring more transparent reporting. It should have been prominent in the story.
But it was nowhere to be found on this story about McCain and financial regulation. Maybe WaPo’s Google connection was down yesterday.
Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias in the presidential campaign. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.
Posted in Media Bias 2008 | 1 Comment » | |
Trackbacks/Pings
Leave a Reply
[The "Comment Box" is WYSIWYG except that you have to double space between paragraphs!
Type it the way you want it to look -- Just remember to double up those line spaces.]
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Comments
September 17th, 2008 at 10:37 am
News boycott time? They have such contempt for their readers and viewers, perhaps we should find a better way to spend our time and money. The MSM can talk, but it doesn’t mean we’re required to listen.