Accuracy in Media

Business cable network CNBC asked, in a special report, whether investment manager Bernard Madoff pulled off the “scam of the century.” But Madoff is only accused of a $50 billion heist and Ponzi scheme. That’s peanuts compared to what the politicians have done to us—and what President Obama could also do, by spending $1 trillion on a “stimulus” that could turn the recession into a depression.

The George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which was run by Obama’s Transition Project co-chair, John Podesta, said Obama would launch a “Green, Unionized Economic Recovery.” The key word was “unionized,” a tip-off that public money would subsidize expansion of the labor unions that backed Obama.

One of those powerful unions, the AFL-CIO, is headed by John Sweeney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

But where would the money come from?

On December 15, in a story that went unnoticed, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the federal government had failed another financial audit. It was the 12th year in a row that the federal government has been unable to accurately report on its fiscal condition. Frankly, nobody knows precisely where the money is going. But we know where it’s coming from—the beleaguered taxpayers.

The media showed film footage of Madoff leaving his New York apartment and being pushed around by a horde of photographers and cameramen trying to get a shot of him. Why aren’t the politicians being surrounded in similar fashion for destroying the financial stability of our country?

The GAO report was released one day before President Bush had told CNN’s Candy Crowley, in one of his last interviews as president, that “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”

“I feel a sense of obligation to my successor to make sure there is not a huge economic crisis,” Bush told Crowley. So he was panicked by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a liberal Republican with close ties to Communist China, into pushing Congress to approve a $700-billion Wall Street bailout plan. What Bush got was a huge economic crisis. Our “salvation” now lies in Obama, a socialist who wants to spread the wealth around and spend even more money, perhaps as much as $1 trillion in a New Deal-style “stimulus.”

In regard to the auto bailout, comedian Jay Leno probably had the best line. He said, “Don’t you love watching congressmen lecture auto executives on how to run their business? I mean, you got people that put us a trillion dollars in debt lecturing people who put us a billion dollars in debt?” The trillion dollar figure, of course, is only a reference to the current projected federal deficit. It could get far larger, especially if Obama’s “stimulus” plan is passed by a Congress led by Senator Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Another Ponzi Scheme

Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital pointed out that “The Social Security Administration runs its ‘trust funds’ with precisely the same methods used by Madoff and Ponzi. As money is collected from current workers, the funds are then dispersed to those already receiving benefits. None of the funds collected are actually invested, so no investment returns are ever generated. Those currently paying into the system are expected to receive their returns based on the ‘contribution’ made by future workers.”

He added, “The United States Government runs its own balance sheet based on the Ponzi principal [sic] as well. Our national debt always grows and never shrinks. As existing debt matures, proceeds are repaid by issuing new debt. Interest payments on existing debt are also made by selling new debt to investors. The whole scheme depends on an ever growing supply of new lenders, or the willingness of existing lenders, to continue to roll over maturing notes. Of course, as was the case with Madoff, if enough of our creditors want their money back, the music stops playing.”

The Obama “stimulus,” he warns, threatens inflation and a weakening dollar.

In terms of the financial “rescue” package, Bloomberg’s latest estimate is that the cost has reached a staggering $7.7 trillion. A more recent estimate, provided in a Politico.com story by Jeanne Cummings, is $8.7 trillion. She said Bianco Research President James Bianco said this “amounts to more government aid and assistance than nine other historic bailouts and big government outlays combined.”

A December 10 GAO Report dealt with the so-called TARP (Troubled As-set Relief Program), which was supposed to “rescue” the financial system. Paulson changed his mind and TARP became the CPP, a capital purchase program that had provided taxpayer funds to 87 financial institutions as of December 5.  However, the GAO found that the Treasury Department had yet to determine “how it will ensure that CPP is achieving its intended goals” and has yet to “establish an effective management structure and an essential system of internal controls.”

In other words, there is really no effective oversight and no accountabil-ity.

Can we start to have some media scrutiny of America’s descent into socialism and national bankruptcy before Obama gets Congress to “save” us by spending more money and going further into debt?

 

 

STUDY PROVES “CREDIT CRISIS” WAS A FRAUD

Doing the kind of investigative reporting we should expect from the major media, a financial research and consulting firm has released a major analysis of the “credit crisis” that concludes that the claims made by Treasury Department Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to justify a socialist takeover of the financial industry were demonstrably false.

The analysis, Flawed Assump-tions about the Credit Crisis: A Critical Examination of US Policymakers, concludes that the result of the unjustified massive federal intervention in the economy could be similar to the economic crisis in the Weimar Republic of 1922, where disastrous hyperinflation made the currency worthless and threatened the nation’s political system and stability. 

The analysis was released by Celent, a Boston-based firm that provides independent information and advice to financial services companies. The 30-page report, made available to Accuracy in Media, did not accuse Paulson and Bernanke of lying about the “credit crisis.” But it did say that “It is startling that many of Chairman Bernanke’s and Secretary Paulson’s remarks are not supported or are flatly contradicted by the data provided by the very organizations they lead.”

Using charts and graphs of data from the Federal Reserve and other agencies, the Celent study said that statements from Paulson and Bernanke about a “credit crisis” affecting businesses, real estate, banks, and state and local governments were just not true.

The report says there is “a contradiction” between what Paulson and Bernanke have said and the reality of the situation, as demonstrated in the official data. It calls these “discrepancies” and says that some of their remarks are “puzzling.”

Asked for comment on why he was able to uncover this information while the major media have not, Octavio Marenzi, founder and CEO of Celent, told AIM, “What we need from the media is more skepticism and more engagement. Too frequently state-ments are taken at face value. Also, most journalists are under such tight time pressure that they do not have the time to reflect and to dig deeper. They are on a conveyor belt and just trying to keep up with the required level of output.”

The False Claims

Paulson had claimed that, by mid-September, when he persuaded President Bush to go public with demands for Congress to approve a $700-billion bailout plan, the financial system had “seized up,” credit markets had “froze,” and interbank lending had been “substantially reduced.”

But none of this was true. “The freezing of the credit markets that Secretary Paulson cites is not visible” in the data, the Celent report shows.  

Paulson also made the claim that blue-chip industrial companies could not issue longer-term commercial paper. But this claim “finds no support” in the data, the report says.

Bernanke had claimed that businesses were “confronting diminished access to credit” when in fact “the opposite” was true, the study demonstrates.

The suggestion is made that Bernanke and Paulson were acting on behalf of “a particular set of businesses and financial institutions” and exaggerated the problem in order to justify “unprecedented levels of government intervention in the markets.”

It is implied that these firms were certain big banks and companies. But while they may have been having problems raising funds, the credit market in general was “working well,” the report said. 

It declared, “Doubtlessly, a number of the leading financial institutions in the US are in serious trouble, as are a number of the leading industrial firms. However, credit difficulties surrounding a specific set of firms is not the same as a problem in the credit markets in the aggregate.”

The study said that “A clear and cogent analysis of the credit crisis has not been presented by policymakers, despite the fact that unprecedented levels of public funds are being deployed.” As a result, the “massive injection of funds could well exacerbate the problem rather than help.”

The report said the money supply “has recently increased at a pace never seen before in US history” and could signal a pending bout of hyperinflation. It said the increase is “a staggering 74% in only 84 days” and explains, “Previously, this kind of jump would be seen over the course of a decade or more.”

It then concluded by suggesting that the real danger to the U.S. is not a great depression like that of 1929 but a hyperinflationary period comparable to the Weimar Republic in 1922. 

While it is possible that Paulson and Bernanke have additional data supporting their hypothesis that there has been a general breakdown in credit markets, Celent said they had not shared this data with the public and there would have to be an explanation of why the data being released to the public is incorrect. Celent is skeptical that any kind of additional and therefore secret data exist.

More than 80 members of Congress have sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, asking for the CEOs of institutions receiving some of the Paulson bailout money to testify about what has happened to the funds.   

Bloomberg News Service filed suit last year against the Federal Reserve seeking information about “emergency” loans in the crisis. Similarly, the Fox Business Network filed suit against the U.S. Treasury Department in December seeking information on the use of the bailout funds for American International Group, the Bank of New York Mellon, and Citigroup, Inc.

On December 15, the Thomas Moore Law Center sued the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to stop all bailout funds from going to AIG. The lawsuit argues that the U.S. government, through its ownership stake in AIG, is violating the Constitutional prohibition on the establishment of a state church because AIG promotes Islamic-style Shariah-compliant businesses and insurance products. The lawsuit was filed in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of Kevin J. Murray, a former Marine infantryman who served two tours of duty in Iraq.

 

 

MEDIA DEMAND “RIGHTS” FOR HOMOSEXUALS

Newsweek’s ridiculous December 15 cover story, “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage,” prompted a leading Bible authority, Professor Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon of the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, to write at length about how Newsweek author Lisa Miller distorted the bible and deceived her readers.

At about the same time this sorry excuse for a cover story was being distributed, Newsweek announced more job cuts. It had cut more than one hundred jobs in the Spring. It shows that Newsweek is becoming economically as well as morally bankrupt.

In a previous major article,   Gagnon went beyond the issue of media bias to write ominously about “Obama’s Coming War on Historic Christianity over Homosexual Practice and Abortion.” He said the record indicates that, in the area of free speech rights, Obama and/or his appointees to federal agencies will seek to enact “severe restrictions” against alleged “homophobic” utterances, probably through the application of so-called “hate crimes” laws. Those who violate these new rules and regulations will “incur financial penalties and loss of license,” he warned. Such a scheme could be the forerunner to the re-imposition of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” on broadcasters.

But wait. Aren’t we being told by liberal and conservative columnists and commentators that Obama is coming across as “moderate?” Didn’t Obama’s selection of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver an inaugural invocation prayer signal moderation on Obama’s part?

As we have argued in the past, especially in regard to the handling of the financial crisis, Obama looks like a “moderate” only because Bush has moved so far to the left. That’s also true in regard to promotion of homosexuality. Bush did not support homosexual marriage, but he promoted the homosexual agenda in many other ways, earning sympathetic press releases from the “gay” Log Cabin Republicans, especially because he spent billions of dollars on AIDS.

For his part, Rick Warren gave Bush a “peace” award for spending billions of dollars on AIDS.

But corruption in the AIDS program is notorious. Senator Tom Coburn highlighted how 116 U.S. federal employees joined 22,000 people attending last year’s International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. The event was supposed to featured a “Sex Workers Mini Film Festival” and a session led by a pro-prostitution group that bragged of bringing in “lots of tourist dollars” for Thailand. Another workshop was titled, “Good Catholics Use Condoms.”

The FAIR Foundation, which exists because of the inequities in disease research spending by the federal government, notes that AIDS gets far more money than 16 diseases that kill a million more Americans than AIDS annually. More than $200 billion in federal money has been spent on AIDS here and abroad but no cure or vaccine has been discovered.

Under pressure, alleged Republican homosexual Senator Larry Craig, who pleaded guilty to inappropriate behavior in an airport bathroom, has been forced out of that body by Senate Republicans. But the problem remains. Alan Stang’s incendiary book, Not Holier Than Thou, exposes a significant number of homosexuals in official Republican and Democratic ranks.

For those who say none of this is relevant and that it doesn’t impact public policy, Stang points to the ongoing scandal on the other side of the aisle, involving Democratic Party Rep. Barney Frank. You may recall that he hired a “hot bottom” out of the Washington (Gay) Blade and then let him use his apartment as the base of a homosexual prostitution ring. Frank also tried to fix his parking tickets. Frank was reprimanded for this conduct by the House of Representatives, but the Democrats have lower standards than Republicans and did not expel or force him out of Congress. 

Frank found a new “partner” or “lover,” Herb Moses, who became assistant director for product initiatives at Fannie Mae while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.

It turned out the Freddie Mac Foundation had given more than $125,000 to gay-activist groups since 2005, while the Fannie Mae Foundation had donated about $80,000 to such groups over the last decade.

The “Embedded” Journalists

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth has documented how the media have a deliberate policy of not reporting anything that puts homosexuals in a bad light. The group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays says this is due to the efforts of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA), which “boasts over 1,300 journalists embedded in the nation’s leading newspapers, television and radio stations, and new media” and  which has announced that it is monitoring the “new generation of journalists” to make sure they toe the line.

Sponsors of last year’s National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association convention included Fox News, CBS, CNN, ESPN, Gannett, Hearst Newspapers, NBC Universal, the McClatchy Company, the Washington Post (parent of Newsweek), and Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, Americans who support traditional marriage are facing increasing threats. Following approval of the pro-traditional marriage Proposition 8, homosexuals went on a rampage. A 69-year-old woman carrying a Styrofoam cross had it ripped out of her hands and stomped on by “gay” activists. White powder, designed to make people think it contains the deadly anthrax bacteria, was sent to Mormon temples and offices to protest the fact that members of that church supported Proposition 8.

Homosexual activists also attacked Rick Warren, whose Saddleback Church is based in California, for backing Proposition 8. Trying to have it both ways, Obama said he opposed homosexual marriage but did not support Proposition 8.

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