The Banks Get a Bailout, but Fox Doesn't Touch That Word
Reported by Melanie - March 11, 2008 -
This morning (March 11, 2008), the Federal Reserve announced that it will make $200 billion available through weekly auctions (adding yet more money "as needed") to banks and other agencies in exchange for their debt, including mortgage-backed securities.
Sounds like a bailout to me. If it walks like a bailout, talks like a bailout, it's a bailout.
But on Fox, the word "bailout" is reserved for losers, like you and me. When the government contemplated helping homeowners caught in the mortgage mess/credit crisis, Neil Cavuto, Fox's "business news" guy, berated them for being irresponsible and not knowing what they were getting into. "We pay our bills. Why should we bailout people who don't? Didn't they read the contract?" is the gist of what he said then. But when discussing this bank bailout today, the topic wasn't why should we bailout the wheeler dealers who put this unsustainable deck of cards together in the first place. It was about the "Fed providing lots of cash to calm things down," as Cavuto said. Or "pumping $200 billion into the system" as Cheryl Cassone said or, "inject liquidity" as FBN's Eric Bolling called it. One chyron read, 'Dow Soars After Fed Says it Will Lend Banks up to $200 Billion." And then the question was, "will it work," not how did we get here and who's going to take responsibility.
On Fox, the use of the word "bailout" is reserved for those it wants to paint as irresponsible losers, not for the likes of Citigroup and Merrill Lynch.
Food for thought -- FYI: Media Overlook Fed Bailout in Plain View.
March 12, 10:30 a.m. ET -- More food for thought: Happy talk on the Bailout.
