Danny Schechter - ColdType

ProLoGUe
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In July of 2009, President Barack Obama held a press conference
focused mostly on health care. At its conclusion,
in response to a provocative question, he made a provocative
remark, “Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting
somebody when there was already proof that they were in
their own home,” referring to the arrest of a friend of his, Harvard
Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates.
The media exploded charging that he unfairly judged the
conduct of the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts who had
arrested Gates inside his house. It was a comment he later
regretted, said he had “mis-calibrated,” and withdrew, wellaware
of how any reference to race quickly can be distorted
and become a polarizing hot button issue.
Yet, earlier at the same media event, he made another comment
that might have triggered a bigger media storm but was
ignored perhaps because it was about institutional practices,
not a controversial incident. When asked about his financial
reform package, he insisted that Wall Street firms knew what
they were doing when they made predatory loans. No one
called him on that, not even Wall Street.
Here’s what he said. “We were on the verge of a complete
financial meltdown. And the reason was because Wall Street
took extraordinary risks with other people’s money. They were
peddling loans that they knew could never be paid back.”
If this is true, as I believe it is, it is certainly illegal. Yet no
one has stepped up to the plate to deny it. Certainly not the
relentless Right-wing which fell on Obama like a ton of bricks
even accusing him of being a racist because of his concern
about racial profiling.
If it were a smear, you would expect an uproar in the Wall
Street-Real Estate complex responsible for millions of fami-