Danny Schechter - ColdType

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of failures were cited – a failure of judgment, an industry failure,
a risk failure, a regulatory failure, a policy failure, etcetera,
etcetera. The blame game had begun. The media frame morphed
into, “we are all to blame, guilty of greed, over-spending
and under-saving.”
And when it’s everyone’s fault, no one can be held responsible.
No wonder the circle closed so quickly.
As the crisis lurched forward, from bad to worse, from Wall
Street to Main Street and then from America to the world,
the story only became more challenging to understand and
explain. Its causes are still being debated.
A financial crisis was creating a social crisis. The public, quiet
at first, uncertain of what was happening, or why, was ready
to let its new President handle things. The only exception to
a pervasive passivity occurred when AIG brazenly gave large
bonuses to its executives after the Government saved it from
collapse. Somehow, the huge bailouts themselves did not provoke
as much anger or what the media labeled “pitchforks” of
resentment. (“Pitchforks” is a reference to what peasants and
street mobs carried when attacking land owners and protesting
the rich in earlier times.)
But then, as more strange anomalies appeared, there was a
growing desire from law enforcement to investigate patterns of
fraud and white-collar crime. This was not unexpected, given
the recent history of high-profile intersections of corporate
behavior and corruption.
At the local level, media outlets focused more on bank robbers
rather than banks robbing as a “if they can do it, we can
do it” culture of fraud spread in the country at large. Example:
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – Thirteen banks and financial
institutions around the state are missing a lot of money –
$1 million, to be exact – ripped off in a scam broken up by
the U.S. Secret Service.