The news media have often taken President Barack Obama’s side against banks, portraying bankers as the villains. But that was not the case on “American Morning” Jan. 22.
Business correspondent Christine Romans surprisingly blamed the previous day’s stock market slide on “tough new rules” proposed by Obama the same day. According to CNN, Obama wants to limit the size of banks, separate commercial and investment banks, implement trading restrictions and “curb risk-taking.”
“That’s why the Dow is down 213 points,” Romans concluded before supplying the perspective from Wall Street:
“But there’s a feeling among many who work on Wall Street, many people who analyze and study Wall Street that this might be going a little bit too far,” Romans said. “And remember, it might not do anything to help the banks start lending more, which is the whole problem.”
Diane Swonk of Mesirow Financial told Romans “it’s easy to scapegoat the banks,” but warned that this may be like “cutting off our nose to spite our face.”
Romans’ “numeral” for that segment was based on a Bloomberg Survey of investors. Bloomberg found that 77 percent of