Glen Beck Lacks Honor

David Weidner's Writing on the Wall

Aug. 31, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EDT

Glenn and me

Commentary: A Talking Heads moment with the controversial talk show host

By David Weidner, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Glenn Beck welcomed me with a big hello and a goofy grin. I liked him immediately.
It was April Fool's Day 2008, more than two years before his day in the Washington sun this past weekend. Bear Stearns Cos. had just been acquired by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) . The financial industry was spinning, but much of the world was still living in the bubble economy. Housing prices were holding. Oil prices were still north of $100 a barrel.
Earlier that day, I had been invited on his show. It was still on CNN. Beck moved to Fox News later that year. The topic was the price of oil. A producer called for a pre-interview. I had done a lot of reporting and writing on the subject. My take was that Wall Street speculation was largely to blame, not the oil companies. Read 2008 column on oil speculation.

Reuters

TV commentator Glenn Beck waves to supporters at his Restoring Honor rally on the National Mall in Washington.

(Fox is a division of News Corp. (NASDAQ:NWS) , which also owns MarketWatch.)
Beck's producer was smart and asked good questions. I explained to her how Wall Street traders pushed up energy prices in Europe where there were fewer market limits and how Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS) analysts were particularly influential in driving up prices by setting eye-popping price targets. It was a subject that had been under-covered by the media, in my opinion.
She explained to me that Beck wanted to know if oil companies were responsible. I said I didn't think so, and we made arrangements for my visit to the studio.

Made bigger by TV

At the time, I was familiar with Beck, but not a regular viewer. His billboards were ubiquitous on the sides of city buses. His interviews didn't make much of an impression on me, or at least I didn't remember anything if I saw one.
His monologues were the thing that really awed me. I didn't always agree with him -- rarely, actually -- but as someone who writes and talks commentary, I admired his skills. He's a fantastic and persuasive speaker in the way he uses cadence, pauses and nuanced words.
A radio guy at heart, Beck's transition to TV made him even more powerful. He isn't a handsome guy. He looks like your local insurance agent. But the folksy persona matches the message.

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When I arrived at the studio, I was ushered into the makeup room and that's where I first met Beck. In person, he's not much different than what you get on the tube. He is, perhaps, a little more rumpled. He was wearing Converse sneakers. I've bumped into him a few times here in the News Corp. building. I've never seen him in a suit.

On the show

After giving me his big hello, Beck rushed off to somewhere, probably his stage. I was sent to a dark small booth with a camera pointed at a tall chair. These "remote" studios aren't that unusual. They use them to save space on the main stage, or just create the illusion that someone is beaming in. But for Beck they served a purpose I would soon discover.
There was a monitor so I could watch the show. Beck was doing his monologue. Then, he interviewed someone on a different subject. Finally, he turned to the subject of oil prices.
My memory of what followed may not be perfect. I contacted CNN to get a clip of the show and they didn't respond. It's not on YouTube, which is surprising, since it seems everything is. But my conversation with Beck left a lasting impression.
Beck introduced me. A light on the camera turned red. I smiled. The light went off. Beck didn't begin with a question, but more of a statement. He said he knew that I thought speculation was to blame. He said he knew I thought Wall Street had a role. But wasn't, Beck said, the real problem Congress?
April Fool's Day, indeed. Beck bum-rushed me by dismissing the answers I had given to his producer earlier. He turned a discussion of the causes of high oil prices into a political debate, one I wasn't really interested in or prepared to talk about.
Disoriented, I probably didn't start my reply well, but when I got my wits about me, I argued that his thesis was wrong. I said it wasn't a political issue but a trading issue. My answer probably started to sound hostile.
And here's where Beck had what we all do from time to time, a Talking Heads moment. He stopped making sense.
Beck followed up with a question -- again it was more of a statement -- about how government policy was responsible for higher oil prices. It was a theme he would return to all summer as oil prices inched higher.
Again, I said I didn't see it that way and before I could elaborate, Beck began talking over me, that little red light went off and he turned to another guest in Washington who seemed to agree with him before my audio was turned off.
It was over. Gone in 30 seconds, if that.

'Restoring honor'

I was angry and disappointed. On one level, I understood. This was his show. It was his game. It was entertainment, not a real debate. It happens. Whether CNN, CNBC, MSNBC or Fox, shows are hosted in a way in which guests are brought on to simply break up the monotony.
We're fodder for the stars. Beck wanted a guest who played into his narrative that we shouldn't blame the oil companies for high prices; we should blame the government.
But on another level I was profoundly disturbed that Beck had used a news device -- interviews -- to advance an agenda.
The price of gas is pivotal to our economy. What influences its price is complicated. Yes, there's plenty of room for debate even over whether speculators are fueling the price. But the way Beck dealt with the subject was dishonest. Ours was a mock interview, perhaps designed to be contentious and keep the viewers watching.
What it wasn't, was an intelligent discussion. It wasn't even a discussion. Perhaps I was naive, but I still can't help but feel I was duped and set up. Small consolation: I watched a few of his shows and found I wasn't the only one.
And that's why when I saw my old friend Glenn Beck leading "restoring honor" marches on Washington as he did Saturday, I wondered what kind of "honor" he's talking about. Honoring guests? Honoring ideas? Honoring points of view?
Who knows? But knowing how Beck doesn't like things complicated, I'll make an observation and keep it simple.
Restoring honor? You have to have some to begin with.

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Elizabeth Warren Pushes Wall Sreet Reform

Image by New America Foundation via Flickr

Shahien Nasiripour
shahien@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting




Wall Street Reform: Elizabeth Warren Challenges Republicans To Stand Up For Families


It's time for senators -- especially the Republicans -- to square their upcoming votes on financial reform with their long-professed desire to protect families, said consumer advocate and federal bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday in an interview with the Huffington Post.

"Everyone in Washington claims to be on the side of families and to support reform," said Warren, a member of the 2010 TIME 100 list of the world's most influential people. "But the test is who votes to paper over problems with another regulatory system designed to fail and who votes for real Wall Street accountability even if it means that some donors will be disappointed.

"I'm tired of hearing politicians claim to support families and, at the same time, vote with the big banks on the most important financial reform package in generations. I'm deep-down tired of it."

Of all the proposals in the 1,400-page Senate bill attempting to reform Wall Street and protect American consumers, none is more contentious than the one calling for the creation of a consumer-focused agency dedicated to protecting borrowers from abusive lenders.

Reform-minded Democrats want a powerful independent entity able to defend powerless families from the banks and financial firms that squeeze profits out of customers through tricks, traps and outright predatory loans.

Moderates want to say that they voted for a bill that protects consumers -- even if it really doesn't.

Republicans profess a desire to protect consumers, acknowledging regulators' past failures, but they also don't want to stem the flow of credit or needlessly harm lenders' ability to make a buck.
Story continues below

The Senate bill, authored by the banking committee's chairman, Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, calls for a consumer entity to be housed inside the Federal Reserve. It largely, though, adheres to Warren's four tests: a chief appointed by the president, an independent source of funding, the authority to write consumer rules and the ability to enforce them against unscrupulous lenders. The unit, thus, focuses squarely on consumers. Ensuring banks' profitability is left to banking regulators.

The Republicans' counter-proposal, released this week, fails all four of Warren's tests.

It calls for a council led by the heads of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Federal Reserve. They'd issue rules, supervise "our nation's largest financial institutions, large non-bank mortgage originators, and other financial services providers who have violated the consumer protection statutes," and enforce the rules.

Warren isn't thrilled with the idea of allowing bank regulators -- whose top priority is to ensure the profitability of the nation's banks -- to continue to oversee consumer protection, particularly when the OCC is involved.

"The problem with consumer protection is structure. Our current consumer regulatory process is designed to fail, and if we don't fix it, it will fail again," she said. "In every major dispute between customers and banks, the OCC entered the fray on the side of the banks. Clearly, banks -- not their customers -- were the OCC's primary interest. The idea that the OCC would now be in a position to veto the new consumer agency is shameful.

"If our goal was to take any lessons from the crisis, we would do the reverse: Let's give a consumer regulator a veto over the OCC," Warren added. After all, "it wasn't a consumer regulator who presided over the biggest financial meltdown in generations."

She didn't hold back in singling out the GOP's plan, which the Harvard Law professor and bankruptcy expert said was "pure genius -- for the banks who want to keep running things."

"The substitute language on consumer protection is designed to paper over very real structural problems with a new system that is designed to fail as much as the status quo is," Warren said. "The whole idea of the substitute is to take a bunch of regulators that already failed and throw them in a committee together."

Asked if she thought Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Richard Shelby of Alabama are trying to protect families from predatory lenders, Warren let loose.

"It isn't possible to protect families and at the same time to paper over the sorts of problems that led to the crisis with just another system that is designed to fail," she said of the duo leading the GOP effort against the consumer agency. "The time has come for choosing."

With Republicans abandoning their effort to prevent Dodd's bill from being considered on the Senate floor (the bill passed a procedural hurdle on Wednesday), senators will soon begin offering and debating amendments.

Shelby hopes to weaken the consumer agency.

"This bill still contains a sprawling new consumer protection bureau that will find and force its way into facets of our economy that had nothing to do with the housing crisis," he said in a Wednesday statement. "This massive new bureaucracy would have unchecked authority to regulate whatever it wants, whenever it wants, however it wants. I am aware of no other arm of the federal government this powerful, yet so unaccountable."

On Tuesday, Shelby told reporters that the agency was "the biggest obstacle" keeping Democrats and Republicans from reaching a deal.

McConnell also has attacked the agency, as has Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

To dilute the agency's power, Shelby and others will push proposals to give bank regulators more authority to rein it in, like replacing it altogether or giving bank regulators stronger veto authority.

The GOP proposal, for example, calls for the Fed chairman, currently Ben Bernanke, to be one of three leaders atop the consumer council.

"Can someone please ask Ben Bernanke if he actually wants to spend his time serving on that committee?" Warren asked. "How much time does he plan to carve out of his day to think about kickbacks on car loans or payday rollovers?

"Let's give those issues to people who have the time and expertise to deal with them," she added.

Sources who have been in meetings with Bernanke and have heard him discuss these issues privately say it's "very hard to believe that he has any real interest" serving on a consumer council like the one envisioned by the GOP.

Another way Republicans and bank-friendly Democrats will try to weaken the bill's consumer protection provisions is by repealing the portion of the bill that attempts to give states more power in going after big banks that violate consumers. At present, states are largely unable to thanks to an aggressive legal campaign over the past decade by the OCC.

National banks like Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citibank argue that it's too difficult and costly to comply with different consumer protection regimes in 50 states, so they need a national standard. The OCC agrees, and also touts the legal precedent set by numerous U.S. Supreme Court decisions interpreting the National Bank Act, the 19th-century law that forms the basis of the nation's banking system.

States and consumer advocates say the OCC protects big banks at the expense of consumers. State officials argue that the OCC essentially allows for consumers to be preyed upon and defrauded. The OCC vigorously denies the accusations.

Warren points out, though, that other industries don't get the special treatment afforded to national banks. In his proposal last summer, President Obama said the bill should end the OCC practice, known as preemption.

"Walmart operates in all 50 states, and it doesn't come to Washington demanding that Congress protect it from state laws that demand workplace safety or environmental standards or anything else," she said.

"Every other industry views compliance with state laws as a minor administrative cost of doing business. The big banks aren't worried about the difficulty of following local laws -- they have lawyers and computers to figure it out. Besides, thousands of little banks do it every day," she added.

In the House, bank-friendly Democrats led by Melissa Bean of Illinois watered down what was initially a strong provision that effectively neutered the OCC's authority to preempt state laws on everything from capping ATM fees to reducing overdraft charges and banning abusive home mortgage loans.

The bill now essentially resembles the status quo. Bean touts her vote on the House bill, which passed in December, as one for reform. So do the other legislators who voted against giving states more authority to crack down on abusive lenders, yet ultimately voted for the bill.

"There were others that thought they could get away with voting for the overall reform package while doing everything they could behind the scenes to hold water for the big banks and earn all those campaign contributions," Warren said. "We're about to find out if any senators want to play those games."

She hopes to find out soon.

"Every day that goes by without a clear set of rules in place to guide our economy into the future is a day that costs us money," she said. "Every credit card, payday loan, car loan and check overdraft that hides another fee or another bizarre interest calculation in the fine print costs American families. Every Too Big to Fail that takes on a little more risk, or leverages up just a little more, or that sucks capital away from another business that doesn't have a government guarantee at no charge costs American families. Every lousy product sold to a family, to a retirement fund, or to a local township costs American families.

"We cannot rebuild a strong and reliable economy without new rules," she continued. "We need those rules now. Not next month, not in six months, not in a year. Now."

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