I viewed the Bill Moyers show on PBS last night which featured two liberal journalists, Matt Taibbi and Chrystia Freeland, who have received national attention in liberal circles for their criticisms of the banking industry and the government bailouts of that industry.
After a lengthy discussion about all the reckless practices of the banks and a growing plutocracy, suddenly Freeland interrupts to assure everyone that she believes in capitalism, and that the government bailouts were absolutely necessary. It was like she had received instructions by the show's handlers through her earphone that she needed to do this. If that wasn't the case, she was sufficiently politically sensitive to know that this was a wise career-enhancing statement to make.
This journalist and author went on to explain that what the US needed was another FDR type leader who would stand up to the special interests by introducing reforms and restoring regulations over the banking industry. Taibbi seemed by his silence and facial gestures to indicate agreement with her statements.
What we have here is a quintessential current expression of US political liberalism that confines itself to a moralistic position on current issues, and as such is permissible under unwritten US corporate media rules. If either of them had espoused another alternative, even temporary measures to deal with their banking crises undertaken by the governments of Norway and Sweden as was described in this article, they would not have been permitted to be on the show.
Sweden and Norway made the banks — and their executives, directors and shareholders — pay for the crisis they caused, rather than making their taxpayers pay for it.Because the author of this article goes even further to pose the question in the headline, he will never be invited to appear on Bill Moyer's program or on any other program controlled by the One Percent.
