Djelloul Marbrook

A democratic republic depends on its people knowing what’s going on. You could argue that if the people prefer news about Michael Jackson’s funeral to news about health care or a new Supreme Court justice the republic is in trouble.

But you could just as reasonably argue that the people prefer news they understand to the continuous pretense of the media that what is being fed the people is understandable and cogent.

Take the recent news that Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, mega banks bailed out by taxpayer money, have just turned elephantine profits and are fixing to pay employees handsome bonuses while the people who helped bail them out are losing their jobs and their homes.

Will the media cover this conundrum with the intensity with which they covered Michael Jackson’s sad departure? Will they explain how this could be possible instead of pretending that they understand and if readers and viewers don’t understand it’s because they’re stupid?

The columnist Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate, was as usual ahead of the curve, writing in today’s New York Times that Goldman Sachs’ good fortune is not the nation’s. Goldman, he writes, “made a lot of money selling securities backed by subprime mortgages—then made a lot more money by selling mortgage-backed securities short, just before their value crashed.”

Krugman opens the door here to further inquiry, explaining briefly why good news about these mega banks isn’t good news for the rest of us and why their return to their dangerous old ways is worrisome. There is plenty here for reporters to investigate and lay out in further detail. Will they? Not by the looks of today’s news. They seem perfectly content for one economist to offer an opinion that could be put to the test if they and their editors had the will.

It’s this persistent failure of the press to gather events into context that makes government so vulnerable to crooks and liars.

George Soros and Warren Buffett, men who have made vast fortunes understanding things most of us don’t understand, have said they didn’t understand derivatives and therefore eschewed them. Why can’t the press embrace similar humility?

The public doesn’t understand: Why are these banks, which only yesterday were begging for taxpayer help, now raking money in and showering it upon their employees while the rest of us suffer? Does Congress understand? Does President Obama or his treasury boss, Timothy Geithner?

And if they don’t, why can’t they say so? And if they do, why can’t they explain it to us so that we don’t harbor the awful suspicion that once again we’ve been swindled? The public doesn’t know if something good has just happened or something bad. The public doesn’t understand why these banks are once again flexing their muscle and displaying their arrogance while the economy continues to circle the drain.  But what the public does understand is that we are poorer and more confused. Does the press feel any shame in this circumstance? Is it really so hard to get to the bottom of this story that it’s better to pretend the bottom has already been reached but is  just too hard for the pea-brained public to understand? —DM