AI
Monday, March 18, 2019 6:58:47 PM
Turns Out That Trillion-Dollar Bailout Was, in Fact, Real
A new Washington Post piece fudges the history of the 2008 financial crash
By MATT TAIBBI
A Man Holds a Sign During a Protest On Wall Street Against the United States Government's Rescue Plan For Failing Financial Institutions in New York, 2008.
Last summer, Washington Post “Fact-checker” columnist Glenn Kessler wrote that the Medicare for All plan favored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would cause “providers” to face an “immediate cut of 40 percent in their payments.” The piece was quickly amended to reflect that the cuts only referred to private insurance payments, leaving Medicare recipients untouched. A few days later, Kessler would repeat — and later correct again — the same error.
Now, Kessler is fact-checking another statement made by Sanders, this one about the financial crisis in South Carolina:
“Not one major Wall Street executive went to jail for destroying our economy in 2008 as a result of their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior. No. They didn’t go to jail. They got a trillion-dollar bailout.”
On the question of whether or not anyone went to jail for crimes related to the crisis, Kessler is right that one executive, Kareem Serageldin, did get sentenced to 30 months for offenses that could be construed as having contributed to the crash. That his case took place in 2013, well after reporters like Gretchen Morgensen, Louise Story and myself made noise about the conspicuous absence of prosecutions, is beside the point. Serageldin was indeed prosecuted for overvaluing mortgage bonds, and though he wasn’t one of the important players in the scandal by any stretch, he had a title you could technically call “major.”
Still, Kessler concedes, “Sanders’s overall point is valid,” adding:
Almost 900 executives went to jail for the savings and loan scandal in the 1980s, compared with just one person in the 2008 financial crisis.
From there, he asks, “But did Wall Street get a $1 trillion bailout?” He ends up giving this assertion “Two Pinocchios.”
A new Washington Post piece fudges the history of the 2008 financial crash
By MATT TAIBBI
A Man Holds a Sign During a Protest On Wall Street Against the United States Government's Rescue Plan For Failing Financial Institutions in New York, 2008.
Last summer, Washington Post “Fact-checker” columnist Glenn Kessler wrote that the Medicare for All plan favored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would cause “providers” to face an “immediate cut of 40 percent in their payments.” The piece was quickly amended to reflect that the cuts only referred to private insurance payments, leaving Medicare recipients untouched. A few days later, Kessler would repeat — and later correct again — the same error.
Now, Kessler is fact-checking another statement made by Sanders, this one about the financial crisis in South Carolina:
“Not one major Wall Street executive went to jail for destroying our economy in 2008 as a result of their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior. No. They didn’t go to jail. They got a trillion-dollar bailout.”
On the question of whether or not anyone went to jail for crimes related to the crisis, Kessler is right that one executive, Kareem Serageldin, did get sentenced to 30 months for offenses that could be construed as having contributed to the crash. That his case took place in 2013, well after reporters like Gretchen Morgensen, Louise Story and myself made noise about the conspicuous absence of prosecutions, is beside the point. Serageldin was indeed prosecuted for overvaluing mortgage bonds, and though he wasn’t one of the important players in the scandal by any stretch, he had a title you could technically call “major.”
Still, Kessler concedes, “Sanders’s overall point is valid,” adding:
Almost 900 executives went to jail for the savings and loan scandal in the 1980s, compared with just one person in the 2008 financial crisis.
From there, he asks, “But did Wall Street get a $1 trillion bailout?” He ends up giving this assertion “Two Pinocchios.”
