Can the left and right agree: Big bankers are clueless?

COMMENTARY: The bankers who testified before a special commission this week truly seem clueless as pointed out by Paul Krugman in today's NY Times. Only the wall to wall coverage of the earthquake in Haiti kept the bankers' testimony from being top story material on most newscasts and front pages.


In this fragmented world we live in, where Obama supporters and tea party participants seem irreconcilably divided, perhaps there is a bit of common ground in recognizing that the behemoths of Wall Street really don't get it.

In a strange way this syndrome is closely related to the article posted here yesterday about NBC's CEO rising higher and making more money with each monumental failure. As these creators of chaos continue to draw seven and eight figure paychecks, hardworking citizens struggle with unemployment, underemployment, and home payments they can no longer afford. There is a line from a Bob Dylan song that keeps coming to mind. It's from "Idiot Wind" and it goes like this:

Now everything is a little upside down,

As a matter of fact the wheels have stopped,

What's good is bad, what's bad is good,

You'll find out when you reach the top that you're on the bottom.

If the news media are to effectively carry out their roles as public watchdogs who speak truth to power without fear or favor, aggressive coverage of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission ought to be high on the agenda for continuing scrutiny. Too many good people are out of work, and struggling to get by for the purveyors of failure to continue to be richly rewarded while they fail to acknowledge that the fault lies not in the stars but in themselves. Word plays by the likes of Dylan and Shakespeare at least give us a shot at making some sort of meaning out of the upside down way the world seems to work these days.

TV news and other media would serve the public well by more deeply exploring the real costs inflicted by bankers whose practices have real consequences for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Only then will Congress, the President, and the courts have the clout to take what this bipartisan commission finds and put some teeth into changing things for the good of so many who have been hurt by leaders who fail to take responsibility.