The True Cost Of The Wall Street Bailout

From DailyBail.com:

CNN's Erin Burnett ventured down to Occupy Wall Street and told some protesters that "taxpayers actually made money on the Wall St. bailout." She made fun of the protesters on-air and derided their knowledge of the bailouts.

The only problem for Erin, is that she's the one who didn't get her facts straight.

That's right, the banking apologista, who is engaged to a Citigroup executive, and is infamous for having her ass handed to her on camera by Congressman Brad Sherman over AIG bonuses, didn't do her bailout research before she decided to ridicule protesters for not doing doing their bailout research.

According to the U.S. Treasury's own figures, available publicly to any reader, including pneumatic (we understand if you need a dictionary for that one, Erin) and arrogant CNN reporters, as of TODAY, taxpayers are still more than $95 BILLION IN THE RED on TARP. And that's including all interest and other income. There is still $122 BILLION of TARP funds that have NOT yet been paid back.

We understand that Burnett was excluding GM, but she somehow missed that AIG, alone, still owes over $50 BILLION.

The "we made money on the bailout" meme just won't die. Facts and in the case of Burnett, poor research, be damned...

It seems that Erin conveniently forgets to mention the trillions in stealth bailouts doled out to Wall Street from Bernanke and Geithner, at 0% interest. We haven't forgotten Erin. And neither have the fans of the late Bloomberg reporter Mark Pittman, who fought the Fed for this important reveal...

We all know about TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which spent $700 billion in taxpayers’ money to bail out banks after the financial crisis. That money was scrutinized by Congress and the media. But it turns out that that $700 billion is just a small part of a much larger pool of money that has gone into propping up our nation’s financial system. And most of that taxpayer money hasn’t had much public scrutiny at all. According to a team at Bloomberg News, at one point last year the U.S. had lent, spent or guaranteed as much as $12.8 trillion to rescue the economy. The Bloomberg reporters have been following that money. Alison Stewart spoke with one, Bob Ivry, to talk about the true cost to the taxpayer of the Wall Street bailout.

Here's more from Dylan Ratigan on Bank Bailout Lies:

This lie must be beaten back by all of us like whack-a-mole every time it rears its ugly head. Please help me by sending this information to any politician, media figure, banker, neighbor or robot that you find repeating it -- they can take our money, but they don't own the truth.

Let's break it down:

1. TARP itself hasn't even made money. AIG alone still owes us $75.6 billion. However, they always add the caveat "Other than AIG..." when they say that the bailouts were "profitable." But the AIG money was directly paid to many of these same banks that "paid back their TARP" at an outrageous 100 cents on the dollar! Mind you, this was done by government officials that were the former employees and current shareholders of the very banks they were helping. Let's make banks like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Societe Generale pay back the $105 billion of stolen taxpayer money before we let anyone say "TARP was paid back."

2. TARP is a tiny little part of a massive amount of taxpayer support. TARP is actually less than 10 percent of your tax dollars that have been handed to the banks. And now the banks "paid back" the tiny slice that is TARP with our money, and you are supposed cheer them for savvy. At this very moment, the taxpayer is still owed $2.02 trillion dollars for the bailout by our politicians and banksters, and that number is growing every day.

Never mind the money that these same banks make getting endless 0 percent interest loans from the Federal Reserve (aka you) while either they lend it back to you at 14 percent interest or just lend it right to back the government and pocket the yield. Never mind the multitude of benefits they get from being Too Big To Fail. But you're not supposed to pay attention to that; you're only supposed to notice how fast they paid back TARP!

So instead of these politicians looking for the only obvious place to find the money --clawbacks from the people who continue to steal it -- we are now being subjected to outright lies as they once again pick the banksters over the people who voted them in. But don't let them, or anyone in the media, get away with it without hearing from you.

Sources:

ProPublica Bailout Tracker
http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list/index

U.S. Treasury TARP Update - October 4, 2010
http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/financial-stability/briefing-room/reports/tarp-daily-summary-report/TARP%20Cash%20Summary/Daily%20TARP%20Update%20-%2010.04.2011.pdf

To read the full story:

Memo To Erin Burnett - Shut Your Banking Apologista Pie Hole And Get Your Facts Straight On The Bailout, Seriously!
10-6-2011
http://dailybail.com/home/memo-to-erin-burnett-shut-your-banking-apologista-pie-hole-a.html

CNN's Factcheck Failure on Occupy Wall Street

10/4/11
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4408

Former CNBC reporter Erin Burnett's CNN show OutFront debuted Monday night (10/3/11) with a failed attempt to factcheck the Occupy Wall Street protests.

The show kicked off with Burnett explaining that she "went to Wall Street today to see those protests for myself. I saw dancing, bongo drums, even a clown.... I asked several protesters what it was that they wanted. Now, they did not know.... They did know what they don't want."

Burnett added that "it seems like people want a messiah leader, just like they did when they anointed Barack Obama."

That segued into an interview with center-right CNN pundit John Avlon, a former speechwriter for Republican Rudolph Giuliani. Avlon dismissed the protests ("It's tough to get your demands taken seriously dressed when you're dressed as a zombie"), adding that "conservative populism has always played a major role in American politics. Liberal populist marches like this tend to alienate more people than they attract."

After that discussion, Burnett attempted to set the protesters straight on the facts. As she put it: "What are they protesting? Nobody seems to know. So, this afternoon, we went to Wall Street to find out."

Burnett quizzed one protester: "So do you know that taxpayers actually made money on the Wall Street bailout?" When he says that he was unaware of this, Burnett insists it is true-- and goes on to argue that it basically negates the whole point of the protest:

That's all it would take to put an end to the unrest? Well, as promised, we did go double-check the numbers on the bank bailout, and this is what we found. Yes, the bank bailouts made money for American taxpayers, right now to the tune of $10 billion, anticipated that it will be $20 billion. Those are seriously the numbers. This was the big issue, so we solved it.


The TARP program is not, in fact, the "big issue" of the Occupy Wall Street movement; the concerns about inequality and lack of democracy go far deeper than that. When the Wall Street bailouts are discussed by protesters, the point they seem to be making about it is that banks benefited from generous bailouts that the vast majority of Americans would never enjoy. (As one popular chant puts it: "Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!")

And the fact that the loans were repaid does not mean that they were not a subsidy to the banking industry. How much would it have cost the banks to get the money they needed to survive from private sources? The difference between those terms and what the government actually charged was a gift to the bankers--one that will never be paid back.

The assumption that society as a whole benefited from helping out the banks is debatable, though you rarely if ever see it debated in corporate media (Extra!, 10/10). As economist Dean Baker wrote (9/20/10):

We are also supposed to feel good that the vast majority of the TARP money was repaid. This is another effort to prey on the public's ignorance. Had it not been for the bailout, most of the major center banks would have been wiped out. This would have destroyed the fortunes of their shareholders, many of their creditors, and their top executives. This would have been a massive redistribution to the rest of society--their loss is our gain.


And the Wall Street bailouts are about far more than TARP. As Bloomberg News recently reported (8/22/11), Federal Reserve lending programs to the banking industry topped $1.2 trillion.

These government policies went a long way towards protecting the interests of Wall Street giants. Working people got very little, and the unemployment and foreclosure crises continue to wreak considerable damage on the economy. This is why people are protesting.

The economists and analysts who have criticized these policies could explain this to Erin Burnett's audience. MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, for instance, interviewed Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz last night (10/3/11) after he made an appearance at the protests.

Burnett used to work for the same financial companies that profited from the bailouts--Goldman Sachs, Citigroup--and she is engaged to be married to a Citigroup executive (Business Insider, 9/30/11). Burnett's journalistic career includes plenty of attempts to promote Wall Street interests, earning her praise from the likes of Rush Limbaugh (FAIR Blog, 10/3/11). She even tried to defend Wall Street giants from criticism over using TARP funds to pay giant bonuses (FAIR Blog, 2/3/09).

If CNN is interested in factchecking claims about Wall Street, they might want to start by taking a look at those made by their new host. At the very least, the show should invite the economists and policy experts who could set the record straight.

ACTION:
Please tell CNN's OutFront that Erin Burnett's factcheck of Occupy Wall Street needs factchecking.

CONTACT:
CNN OutFront
Comment Form:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/show/?s=erinburnettoutfront&hdln=2

You can also send your comments to the show on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/OutFrontCNN

And on Twitter:
@ErinBurnettCNN
@OutFrontCNN

Please post a copy of your letter on the FAIR Blog.

Erin Burnett: Voice of the People

Financial reporters revere Wall Street as much as national security reporters revere military and CIA officials
Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday, Oct 5, 2011
http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/05/erin_burnett_voice_of_the_people/

On her new CNN show on Monday night, host Erin Burnett was joined by Rudy Giuliani’s former speechwriter John Avlon and together they heaped condescending scorn on the Wall Street protests while defending the banking industry, offering — as FAIR documented — several misleading statements along the way. Burnett “reported” that while she “saw dancing, bongo drums, even a clown” at the protest, the participants “did not know what they want,” except that “it seems like people want a messiah leader, just like they did when they anointed Barack Obama.” She featured a video clip of herself explaining to one of the protesters that the U.S. Government made money from TARP, and then demanded to know if that changed his negative views of Wall Street.

This is far from the first time Burnett has served as spokesperson for Wall Street; it’s basically what her “journalistic” career is. She angered Bill Maher a couple years ago when arguing that the rich have suffered along with the poor and middle class as part of the financial crisis, and that it would be wrong to “soak the rich” because they’re already paying so much taxes. She caused Rush Limbaugh to gush over her when she argued on TV in 2007 that all Americans benefit when the rich get richer: “the majority of Americans directly benefit from what happens on Wall Street,” she proclaimed, just over a year before the financial collapse.

In an interview last year with Vanity Fair, she insisted that people on Wall Street do not have private planes and that “there are a lot of stalwart, solid people on Wall Street. There are just a few shady people providing the fodder for big budget movies”; when asked: “When was the last time you interviewed somebody on Wall Street and said, ‘Enough of your lies, we deserve the truth goddammit?!’”, she would only say in response: “I’d never use the word ‘goddammit’ in an interview.” And then there’s this two-minute video from her 2009 appearance on Meet the Press, compiled by Progressive Change Campaign Committee, in which she repeatedly heaps patronizing scorn on criticisms of Wall Street while defending its virtue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLWPj5hTkio

Here’s some background about this former NBC News business reporter and current CNN news host, from an article last week:

[Burnett] is set to tie the knot with Citigroup executive David Rubulotta...

The American-born journalist started her career as a financial analyst for worldwide investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs.

During her time at the company she was headhunted by CNN for the position of writer and booker for the network’s hit show Moneyline.

When Burnett later became Vice President of Citigroup/CitiMedia, she met Rubulotta, who currently serves as an executive with the company.


Last week, as MediaBistro reported, “CNN feted its newest anchor [] at Robert restaurant at The Museum of Arts and Design in Columbus Circle, just a few hundred feet from CNN’s NYC headquarters, overlooking Columbus Circle and the southwest corner of Central Park.” Among the many fabulous guests celebrating Burnett’s new “news” program was JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Do you think any of this might have anything to do with her scorn for Wall Street protests and her perpetual defense of the nation’s oligrachs? Would it ever occur to CNN that perhaps a former Wall Street banker at Goldman Sachs, currently engaged to a Citigroup executive, might not be the best person to cover those protests? Of course not: that’s exactly the bias that makes her such an appropriate choice in the eyes of her Time Warner bosses.

Meanwhile, Burnett’s CNN colleague, business reporter Alison Kosik, was encouraged on Twitter to ask the Wall Street protesters to explain the purpose of the protest in 140 characters (the limit for Twitter). As NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen documented, this is how that CNN journalist replied to the suggestion:

"Purpose in 140 or less: bang on the bongos, smoke weed!"


After numerous people criticized her for that, she ignored the criticisms but deleted the tweet without comment; what a brave and intrepid thing for a reporter to do. But while that tweet is deleted, she left this comment, after a staff member on CNN’s Piers Morgan Show wrote: “Occupy Wall Street should go mainstream and protest debit-card fees. Or would that be too corporate?":

"the list of whines is too long already"


Kosik then went on CNN last night and assured everyone that Wall Street traders empathize with the (whining, bongo-beating, pothead) protesters because — echoing Burnett — traders are suffering like everyone else.

Needless to say, Burnett and Kosik consider themselves to be opinion-free, objective “reporters.” Indeed, this is what Burnett said in the Vantiy Fair interview when asked if she sympathizes too much with the Wall Street plutocrats on whom she purports to report: “My job isn’t to give an opinion but to try and explain what’s happening.” But just like Andrew Ross Sorkin and his protection of and subservience to his “CEO-of-a-major-bank” friend, these people are oozing bias and opinion from every pore of their being. They are so devoted to and immersed in the insular oligarchical world of which they are desperate to be a part that they know and care about nothing else. Expecting them to provide objective, critical assessments of business elites is like expecting a heroin addict to rat out his dealer.

Financial reporters like these have the same relationship to Wall Street titans as most national security reporters have to miltiary and intelligence officials: subservience, reverence, and a desperate desire to identify with them. Last night while looking for something else, I happened to stumble into the contentious interview I had last year with CNN’s Jessica Yellin and Fran Townsend about WikiLeaks – when those two, like most media figures, competed with each other to see who could be more scornful and contemptuous of Julian Assange — and realized that the parallels were clear. People like Yellin and Townsend hated WikiLeaks because the group challenges and subverts those whom they most revere (National Security State officials); it’s exactly the same reason that people like Burnett, Kosik and Sorkin are so contemptuous of Wall Street protesters: because the protesters have targeted the high priests of their world (Wall Street executives) with denunciations and opposition.

I’d bet that these two CNN personalities, along with Sorkin, would genuinely find the suggestion that they are not objective to be baffling and offensive. That’s because their world begins and ends with Jamie Dimon, Citigroup executives, and Columbus Circle corporate galas. To them, Truth is what is found in that world and nothing else. When someone like Kosik sneers at concerns over mass joblessness, hopeless debt, foreclosures, and oligarchical control of the political process, she’s not being a conscious propagandist; she’s just being honest. Those problems don’t exist in their world except as abstractions.

The only people they think are worth talking to are people who view the protesters as dirty rabble and their concerns as whiny irrelevancies. They’re serving as spokespeople for the political and financial elites on whom they pretend to report: that’s their job. Listen to Burnett in that Maher appearance linked above; to her, the real victims, the only victims, are the wealthiest who tragically pay so much in taxes and whose net wealth has decreased over the past few years — such as herself, her Citigroup-executive fiancée, her Time Warner bosses, and Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “CEO of a major bank” assignment editor: the only people who really exist in her universe and who matter (do you think Sorkin would have been as responsive to a call from, say, a person suffering long-time unemployment and foreclosure as he was to his “CEO of a major bank”?).

It’s the opposite of surprising that large corporations which own media outlets want to hire people to play the role of journalist on the TV who are slavishly devoted to their culture and their agenda. But that’s the point: the pretense that these people are “objective journalists” delivering opinion-free facts is so discredited that they should just stop pretending. It’s embarrassing already. Few things have exposed their deep, embittered biases as much as their snide, defensive reaction to these Wall Street protests.