Money, Power & Wall Street, Deconstructed

From Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism:

It’s a recitation of conventional wisdom, with just enough focus on some of the numerous things the banks and the authorities did wrong so as to make it seem daring for mainstream TV. But anyone who has been on this beat will find the first two segments cringe-making (one advantage I had was that of reading the transcripts, which makes it much easier to parse the construction). Despite the obligatory shots of Occupy Wall Street protestors, displaced homeowners, and stymied officials, much of the story line is remarkably bank-friendly.

I went kind of hard ball on my comments of the program with my usual litany of concerns. Then we had the slow ball interview of Obama at Rolling Stone. I’m beginning to wonder if anyone, save the bloggers, can still throw heat down the middle.

OTOH, I’m not crazy about this take on the program. For me, the real news was the meeting at the White House, called by McCain who subsequently had nothing to contribute, which devolved into chaos and resulted in then president Bush exiting the room, to leave candidate Obama in charge, by virtue of having a commanding knowledge of the issues. Despite the putative slant of the report, McCain was in fact impotent during the meeting and Bush did fail to take charge and left. Whatever actually happened in the room afterward, the fact remains that Obama as president commanded well in those first critical days of his new administration.

Obama may not have been all that Frontline posits, but when compared to Bush or McCain, our current president seemed pretty well prepared for the crisis he was about to undertake.

About these ads