Banks are essential to an economy. Their proper role is to facilitate commerce. Today, banks do facilitate commerce, but they also do a lot of other things that, entirely by design, enrich few at a great cost to many.

This isn’t particularly new. But now regular folks who don’t work in this ridiculous field are learning more about its design, which is no longer limited to facilitating commerce. They might not know what a weather derivative is or be able to explain what happened to their mortgage after they secured it. But they do know that they are no longer the customer. They know banks can make money without them. They don’t much like that. Who would?

That’s why the Occupy Wall Street protest is happening. That’s why it is newsworthy. And that’s why those protesters will have done more to strengthen the economy than any trader who goes to work tomorrow.

Period. Full stop.

Would you run this story?

The inevitable Andrew Breitbart profile in The New York Times:

“I’m here for some vindication,” Mr. Breitbart said as he took to the lectern at Mr. Weiner’s own news conference.

But before vindication, he sought legitimacy from the same mainstream media he regularly assails. For the revelations about the congressman, Mr. Breitbart partnered with ABC News, which interviewed Ms. Broussard and published its own account of her relationship with Mr. Weiner, a Brooklyn Democrat.

Mr. Breitbart, whose credibility was damaged by his release of a selectively edited tape of Shirley Sherrod, an Agriculture Department official, said he felt ABC News could help the Weiner story rise to something more than a scandal flamed by the conservative blogosphere.

“One of the reasons I went to ABC, believe it or not, was to take this out of the partisan rancor realm,” he said in a phone interview.

Though no such thing exists in actuality, media seeks to flee from its assigned “liberal bias” by giving stories that go against that bias more attention than they deserve. This is the most sinister kind of sensationalism because it’s nothing about the news and everything about the brand publishing it.

Unfortunately, this is the precedent that well-meaning outlets like the Times have set for themselves. Instead of embracing the reality that objectivity doesn’t exist so long as real, breathing humans are reporting the news, the institutionalized press instead moves to placate two non-audiences: those who demand unrealistic objectivity and those with contempt for reporting in general. That, in short, is where dogs like the Breitbart profile come from.

The pundits tonight are saying the Weiner incident is destructive because now the media (and other pundits) are focused on it instead of the high unemployment, the economic uncertainty, the horrendous tax code, and the inequality that is seemingly everywhere — as though they were terribly focused on those problems right up until 4pm today in the first place.

divineirony:

I’m no economist, but… It seems that the sole reason for a business to hire is because of demand for the product or service that business provides. If you own a widget factory, how does a tax cut on your widget profits spur job creation when nobody is buying widgets to begin with? Wouldn’t it be better to put more money in the hands of widget consumers? Maybe some incentives for widget usage?

At my job, when the boss gets a tax break, he doesn’t say “Oh! Now I can give my employees a bonus or a raise! Or hire someone to stand around, just to help them out with a job”; he says “Honey, let’s go to Paris for 10 days, and take the kids!”