Join the Fool as we assess blame for this financial meltdown -- March Madness bracket style! Below is one of two semifinal matchups you can vote on … enjoy!
The case for Wall Street, by Morgan Housel
Blame the media over Wall Street? I understand the frustration, but let's get a few points straight.
I'm a huge fan of Jon Stewart's f-bomb-fueled lashing of Jim Cramer and CNBC, but some examples Stewart used -- like Cramer bragging about the joy of spreading rumors about Apple
The majority of the media reported the facts as it received them in a professional manner. Even if it was biased (and a lot of it was), poor reporting doesn't make you guilty; it makes you untrustworthy. There's no crime in having an opinion, even if it turns out to be disastrously wrong.
Besides, who says some well-regarded members of the media didn't warn us about this entire mess years ago? As New York Times
Plenty of members of the media were sounding the alarm well before the tide went out -- many of us just failed to listen.
The disaster that spawned the bailout of Citigroup
The case for the media, by Tim Beyers
You really don't like the media, do you? At the very least, you think they're more to blame for this crisis than are Adam Smith or Bernie Madoff. Look at these margins of victory:
Can this Cinderella keep dancing? I don't see how. Even if you think that CNBC's Jim Cramer and his peers failed to watch Wall Street's dogs while they were stealing extra kibble, it's the kibble kleptomaniacs who really deserve your ire. (Say that three times fast.)
And yet the public outrage over the media's failure to report on the Street's excesses is so virulent that the namesake newspapers of New York Times Co. and Washington Post
This story gets sadder by the day.
Wall Street, on the other hand, deserves zero sympathy. Who in their right mind would cry for morons who'd bet on credit default swaps on U.S. government bonds, an investment that's virtually guaranteed never to pay out?
You know who created these and other credit derivatives. They're the unemployed geniuses who once occupied opulent offices at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch.
If you must blame the media, blame it for irrational optimism, or complicity. Wall Street has been home to malfeasance for more than a century now. We've survived the ensuing panics -- no thanks to the financiers or the media, but rather because of the survival instincts of our forebears. Every member of the media knows this. They know, too, that there's no reasonable explanation for having ignored this latest crisis as it was developing. Those who did speak up were late in doing so.
That's detestable, and deserving of at least a portion of the blame for this mess that we're in.
Vote now!
Now it's your turn. Who do you think is more responsible for the mortgage mess: the Wall Street wizards, or the finger-pointing and feckless media? Make your pick below.
Check out the Fool’s entire 2009 March Madness bracket here.