The point, though, is that the Journal’s editorial page has been a leading enabler of the Countrywides and its allies and a leading opponent of precisely the kind of prudent banking regulation that could have prevented the present calamity.
We are all living in a “Review & Outlook” world. The least it could do is say it’s sorry.
1.
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Subprime Politics
7 February 2007
The Wall Street Journal
2.
REVIEW &OUTLOOK
The Discriminating Mr. Spitzer
13 October 2005
The Wall Street Journal
Arguing with Mr. Starkman's assertions tempts, but I'm more interested in whether anyone has done any reporting or research into precisely why borrowers have not been able to keep up with their mortgage payments and banks have foreclosed on their properties.
Mr. Starkman sees "predatory lending," but is that a sufficient explanation for many of the foreclosures? Surely borrowers as well as lenders wanted to make extra bucks. Surely many borrowers had hoped to gain from price rises. Well, prices stopped rising. And they fell.
One cannot underestimate the intelligence or integrity of most of today's journalists. Their inability or unwillingness to investigate or report in depth on what has happened is but one of many journalistic failures in recent years. The press of today is extremely corrupt, shockingly incompetent, and blindly partisan, not a good collection of defects in an interesting time.
Posted by Alfred J. Lemire
on Thu 26 Jun 2008 at 01:06 AM
Arguing with Mr. Starkman's assertions tempts, but I'm more interested in whether anyone has done any reporting or research into precisely why borrowers have not been able to keep up with their mortgage payments and banks have foreclosed on their properties.
Mr. Starkman sees "predatory lending," but is that a sufficient explanation for many of the foreclosures? Surely borrowers as well as lenders wanted to make extra bucks. Surely many borrowers had hoped to gain from price rises. Well, prices stopped rising. And they fell.
One cannot underestimate the intelligence or integrity of most of today's journalists. Their inability or unwillingness to investigate or report in depth on what has happened is but one of many journalistic failures in recent years. The press of today is extremely corrupt, shockingly incompetent, and blindly partisan, not a good collection of defects in an interesting time.
Posted by Alfred J. Lemire
on Thu 26 Jun 2008 at 01:07 AM