Mass media Spin-job

Although both candidates have compared the current economy to the Great Depression, Mass Media keeps pulling out useless statistics to keep the sheeple asleep. On CNN this morning they were bandying about the "average number of banks to fail were 94 per year since the Great Depression. We have had 4 so far this year."

Two things are not correct here. First off we have had six gargantuan banks fail: Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Indymac, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers. We also had a number of smaller banks fail, like Contrywide, and a few others. The other issue is that the size of the banks is important. In the last 30 years banks have bought each-other out, smaller banks gobbled up by larger and larger banks. The bank I opened my account with in 1993 has been bought out 4 times, until Bank of America currently owns it.

So when one of these mega-banks fail, it's like several thousand local, neighborhood banks closing. The number of failures is smaller, but each failure is several orders of magnitude larger. I feel that it's the continuing ignorance of the sheeple that's keeping this economy afloat. Bank of America was wise to what's going down, they built up capital, ditched toxic assets, etc. in order to take advantage of the situation. I'm worried they will buy too much and collapse like the banks they are preying upon.

CNN just ran the story again, but now the graphic says "13 banks failed since 2007." Huh, Although the number is now correct, they slant the number by saying "since 2007". It's like Kevin Bacon in Animal House: "Nothing to see here, ALL IS WELL!"