In a strangely incongurent imge, the Drudge Report ran this picture and corresponding tagline this morning:

The link led to this story which had the Yahoo! News headline of "Obama: AIG can't justify 'outrage' of exec bonuses."  However, from the picture, you'd think that Barney Frank in partnership with the Obama administration was actually scheming to delivery the money bag to AIG personally.  Frank, by most accounts, is a populist that clearly leans away from helping corporate American and uses every chance he can to extoll some of his more populist positions.  So, just based on both deed and hype, this pictures seems strange in connection with the tagline.  But it's not so strange if you are GOP party trying to take on a more populist tone.  It's propagandizing at the very least.

The contrast between the Drudgereport.com on the right and the Huffingtonpost.com on the left becomes clear when you see the same persona with a very different tagline, and in this case, a quote more typical of the image Frank has.

How do these two images jive?  Same story, two very different interpretations of reality.  On this one, we'd have to say that the Drudge Reportwas just stretching to demonize Frank.  There are plenty of places where they can criticize Barney Frank, but just was really pushing it.

 But, the Huffington Post did not do any better when it comes to the business of simply feeding people what they want.  We often say that the news these days is about affirming news consumer's existing beliefs versus imparting anything terribly insightful.  Earlier in the morning, the Huffington Post ran a giant line when it came to AIG suggesting that the people were "Not Going to Take It Any More," and suggested a popular backlash was brewing.  All may be true, but it seemed like both the Drudgereport and the Huffington Post were more egging on the backlash with snap reporting with huge doses of judgement versus any insightful commentary.

One of the best discussions regarding the AIG bonus issue came on CNBC with a discussion between Steve Liesman and John Harwood.   

Liesman pointed out that though there were contractual obligations between AIG and the employees that were scheduled to get the bonuses that have caused so much outrage, the government should explore renogiating these agreements just has been done with union workers in the auto industry.  In addition, Liesman pointed out that the real question was how these bonus arrangements were set up.  How could a group responsible for the credit default swap market that cratered so badly have performance incentives such that they would still reap bonuses. What type of compensation plan still results in bonuses after massive losses.  Most of Wall Street is compensated on a performance basis with a nominal base salary and significant performance kickers at the end of the year.  Given this group almost bankrupted all of AIG, how were these performance contracts written?  Liesman pointed out that the government had a fair point in noting the legal hurdles, but that exploring ways to cut a new deal in the wake of new financial realities would likely be necessary.  Liesman went on to provide context by noting that the complex financial instruments involved were largely understood only by these employees that were getting the bonuses.  In some respects, they had all the leverage.  During the Resolution Trust Corporation days of the late 1980s, Liesman pointed out that a similar dynamic had occurred.  But he also pointed out that many of these people were given bonuses in prior years based on shaky profits that never truly materialized.  All in all, his analysis was sober, calm, and provided context despite being restricted to a short 2 minute or so segment. 

Liesman also did a commendable job on Meet the Press this past Sunday. When asked by David Gregory whether the financial crisis was "discoverable," Liesman made an important yet simple point.  First, he suggested "yes" it was knowable, and it was knowable because money was chasing investments versus investments chasing money.  The change in the natural direction of that dynamic was the clue that something was very wrong and the folks at CNBC should have picked up on that.  The same thing happened during the dot-com bubble when  the markets were throwing money at any Power Point presentation with a .com buried somewhere in it.

Not all is bad at CNBC, and they are starting to get some things right with sober, insighful, and calm analysis.  Of course, Liesman was followed by Larry Kudlow and a rant about the Monroe Doctrine (don't even ask)...