What I found most bothersome about Ron Fournier's Drudge-ready analysis of President Obama's press conference for the AP wasn't his clumsy effort to push the "teleprompter" meme (watch out for that one, Jindal lovers) but it's abdication of the journalistic impulse. Take this passage:
Pressed again, Obama cited the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's handling of the IndyMac Bank as an example of government properly using its authority.Is this true? Did the FDIC handle the IndyMac nationalization well? Fournier doesn't even pause to ask the question before inserting a sweeping ideological declaration about how the government handles problems.The government did something right? That's news to most Americans.
The answer is, in short, yes: As Tim Fernholz wrote about on Friday, the FDIC took over IndyMac when it failed, managed it, and kept it intact rather than breaking it up. (The administration has generally erred on the side of caution as to its authority to take over larger banks, and doing so would be much more complicated.) All the insured deposits were protected. Although it sold IndyMac at a ten billion dollar loss, Ryan Avent points out over gmail that selling a failed bank in an economy like this one is entirely different from selling a failed bank in a strong economy.
In other words, the FDIC did what it was supposed to do, and did it fairly well, given the circumstances. But Fournier didn't even bother to ask the question. He'd already made up his mind.
-- A. Serwer
