How Financial Reporters Create Illusion to Cover Up Wall Street's Scams

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Scott Thill

How Financial Reporters Create Illusion to Cover Up Wall Street's Scams
The corporate media's job is to sell confidence on Wall Street's numbers, rather than tempered or even depressed expectations, no matter how realistic they may be.

April 13, 2010 |


As Charles Dickens reminded us in his classic novel Great Expectations, the line between crime and cash is a continually blurry one. And it's easily manipulated by language and narrow self-interest.

For example, let's just consider the overly extensive use of one term: "Unexpectedly." It is especially ubiquitous in finance journalism, where it is repeatedly used to console a rightfully nervous readership that, while good news is a great expectation, bad news just seems to comes out of nowhere. Although I've been informally following this clumsy usage for years now since diving into the hazy, crazy world of finance, I've never run out of daily examples. Just plug the term "unexpectedly" into Google News on any given day, and neither will you.

Here's a few that Google coughed up during this writing: "U.S. Home Sales Fall Unexpectedly in Feb.,"ABC News reported. "French Consumer Confidence Unexpectedly Falls On Job Concern," Bloomberg News reported. "South Africa Unexpectedly Cuts Rates to 6.5%," the Wall Street Journal reported.

Unpacking any of these headlines should be simple enough for those who aren't economists, even without the benefit of reading the stories themselves. Nothing in the average American's life and salary, to say nothing of the lenders and companies he or she has to deal with, warrants the surveyed optimism of economists who think home sales should be going up, rather than down, in any given month. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/146414/how_financial_reporters_create_illusion_to_cover_up_wall_street%27s_scams

[jotsy]

1. Nowhere near enough coverage about the bulk of these hearings, IMO.

Interesting details surfaced about the activities of the big banks and how they veered from policy as that big dramatic moment back in '08 approached.

Mr. Lockhart, regulator for the 'governmental sponsored enterprises' mentioned legislation passing at the end of July that year would have stopped exactly what happened, still sifting through the commission's website for details.

My computer has been at the virus doctor, so I haven't been online since midweek last week, but after seeing not a whole lot of news about it, doesn't look like folks here at much to say about it, maybe I looked in the wrong places. I'm stunned at the lack of interest in this process.

recommended.

[Celebration]

2. mostly they just don't report anything worthwhile at all

Only one mainstream USA media source (NY Post) is covering gold and silver manipulation and naked short selling by JP Morgan.........

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x77676

Criminal activity that has the potential to bring down every currency is being ignored.

[Jefferson23]

3. K&R

[Karenina]

4. . .