Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlatan
The media has the ability to explain what is happening, it always has. Each medium -- newspapers, radio, TV, etc. -- are all capable of hosting cogent discussions. Unfortunately, the ways in which public discourse as evolved over time has drastically diminished the demand to engage at anything more than an infantile level.
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I'm not sure I totally agree with this. While it's absolutely true that the media could be more intellectually honest about the economy, I'm not sure they could really lay the entire thing out for people to digest, even if they had several 2-hour specials or an entire front page. Any meaningful overview would have to include what I suspect is the equivalent of several college level economics and history classes in order to really provide the exact reasons as to how this happened and why. Moreover, even among the more informed there seem to be disagreements about the amount of effect each of the variables had on the result. Not only that, but any true retelling of how this happened would mean exposés on many of the financial contributors and even owners of media outlets.
Right now people are blaming everyone from the Federal Reserve to Goldman Sachs to congress to capitalism. And to varying extents, they're all right and all wrong. I've seen a lot of good theories out there, such as the article above and the recent Rolling Stone article on GS. I would guess that if any news outlet really did roll up their sleeves and try to honestly lay out the whole thing, they'd have some very, very smart people speaking out and saying they're wrong even if the report ends up being well done.
Unless there's a single article out there somewhere that sums up the entire thing, and the article above seems to be missing several components that I've read about elsewhere, we're not going to have an agreement.