I have argued here and here that Obama needs to do a better job of explaining how we got into this financial mess, how his policies will get us out of it and, most important, how we prevent a repeat in the future.

A little while ago, the president gave an impromptu press avail and made a small, but good start.  I don’t have the video just yet.  But when he was asked if he could explain to the American people why it’s important that taxpayers bail out AIG.  Here is a summary of what he said:

AIG issued a lot of insurance policies to banks against losses for the bad investments they made.  Once those investments went south, AIG was forced to pay, but it hadn’t enough capital.  If AIG was then allowed to go bankrupt and not pay the banks, those banks would have failed and the investments of many Americans in those banks –- through their 401k’s and pensions — would have been decimated.  Small businesses would also not be able to tap into credit lines to keep their businesses going.

He then explained that it was critical that moving forward that financial institutions and those who issue insurance policies have more capital, so that if they are forced to pay out, they can do so without going under.  In other words, they need a better asset backing for the insurance policies.

All in all, it was a good start.  Here’s how he could have improved upon the explanation:

• He could have added that banks were also buying securities (mortgage-backed securities and other exotic derivatives) without enough capital to protect themselves against losses. 
• The reason AIG could issue those policies is because the U.S. has insufficient regulations to require assets to back those insurance policies.
• He needed more info. on why bank failures hurt the country.  That may seem elemental, but a lot of people don’t understand why it matters.  It’s not just a matter of depositors losing their money.  The FDIC can protect some of that.  But if many big banks fail, the U.S. doesn’t have the money to pay depositors.  We can print money, but then the value of the dollar would drop so precipitously that our entire  economy would be threatened by hyper-inflation.
• Explain better how 401k’s are invested:  The organizations that — labor unions, investment concerns paid to invest 401k contributions – typically invest employees funds in banks and insurance companies.  If they go bankrupt, the 401k tanks.
• A bit more detail on the kinds of regulations he would propose would have been helpful, including saying specifically that he wants to make sure that, going forward, no institution is “too big to fail.”

Still, this is the kind of explanation Obama needs to make in a series of fireside chats.

After watching CNBC today, I wonder where were all the folks who claim we must honor AIG’s employee contracts when everyone was saying we must break the union contracts of auto workers?

After President Obama addresses Congress last month, while most folks thought it was a great speech, I suggested he missed an opportunity to explain to the American people what’s happening to the economy, how it happened and how his plans address not only the crisis but how we can prevent a reoccurrence in the future.  After all this talk, does anyone really know what a derivative is and how unwinding them requires people expert in their structure?  People are rightly angry about the bail out of irresponsible traders and business leaders who threw caution to the wind in search of obscene profits, not only for their companies but for themselves.  Their anger – my anger – is completely justified.  But anger is not the best emotion to anchor a recovery.

Obama is apparently considering now a series of “fireside chats” first used by FDR to explain not only his economic policies but the state of the economy and how he thought he could fix it. 

I hope Obama goes through with it and carefully crafts each message.  But he needs to do more than just explain the problems and how’ll he’ll solve them.  He needs to emphasize what policies he will put in place to prevent a recurrence. 

The outrage, of course, is palpable against business in general and specifically against the financial sectors.  But there is also a growing sense that our economic system is no longer a just one.  It is acutely slanted toward moneyed interest.  The trickle down economy is now seen for what it is – a condescending bone thrown to the masses.  Work is devalued and capital is king.  An array of excuses – globalization is a favorite – is put forth to justify the exploitation of people who actually work and produce things.

If Obama’s descriptions of what has happened to our economy are to be be believed, he will need to spend just as much time explaining what he will propose to reorder our economic priorities and fashion an economic construct that levels the playing field.  That’s not socialism; it’s fairness.  It’s collective responsibility.

What angers people today is not only what has happened but that no one sees a clear answer to the question:  How do we avoid this in the future?  From corporate bailouts to outrageous compensation to lax regulation, what’s the plan?

Most important, he needs to tell us how we will demand a restructuring of businesses, especially financial institutions – so that nobody, no company – is “too big to fail.”

These chats could be a defining moment for the young president.  Let’s hope he seizes the opportunity.  

The Jon Stewart/CNBC feud climaxed last night with “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer supplicating himself to an interview with Stewart.  It wasn’t pretty. And it wasn’t entirely fair to Cramer to take the fall for his network.

I’ve watched CNBC a lot over the past two years.  I even watched Cramer’s show for awhile until I couldn’t stand his hyperactivity any longer.  But Cramer isn’t the problem.  He was, I think, CNBC’s sacrificial lamb, and he probably hurt himself irrevocably by his performance last night.  It’ll be interesting to see if the interview is referenced tomorrow on the network.

But it’s a shame if it ends with Cramer.  He is an entertainer.  He did not, whether on his show or his appearances throughout the day on CNBC, really position himself as a reporter.  He is a stock trading advisor.  Sure, he often talked about investing for the long-term, but more often you have the sense that he’s just picking stocks for you to trade.  Maybe not day-trading, buying and selling the same stock within a day, but that he is advising his audience on what stocks are positioned for an immediate upside.

There are others on CNBC who do claim to be journalists who are nothing more than shills for their Wall St. buddies and their won right-wing politics.

The worst is Charlie Gasparino, the so-called “On-air editor.”  Exactly what is an “on-air editor”?  From what I’ve seen, it means that he tries to edit himself while he’s on air.  If so, he fails miserably.  He is constantly brought on to deliver “breaking news” he’s uncovered from his sources on Wall St..  He no sooner delivers the PR script handed to him by his sources than he starts delivering his opinions about the wisdom of what he’s heard.  And he is unfailingly dismissive of any political view not supported by the titans of the Street.  Yesterday, the token liberal discussing Obama’s economic plans was Robert Reich, who was constantly interrupted by Gasparino who brought up the canard that small businesses will be paying higher taxes because of Obama’s plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire (which is what Bush proposed when he signed the tax cut bill).  The fact is small businesses, defined by those employing 500 workers or fewer, are overwhelmingly either sole practitioners such as lawyers and doctors, incorporated– so the owners’ income is not the profit from the business—or they make far less than $250,000. 

Here’s the clip.  Listen to Gasparino interrupt Reich repeatedly.  It starts at about 3:30.

There are many others at CNBC who should be raked over the coals.  In the above clip, two other right-wingers are represented – Michelle Caruso-Cabrerra and Dennis Kneale. 

And the original “money honey” Maria Bartiromo sucks up to every CEO with pants on.    As an indication of her lack of seriousness, she reportedly has copyrighted the term “money honey.”

I wish Jon Stewart would now let Jim Cramer go and instead go after the rest of the CNBC faux journalists.

Now the big media guys are jumping in with criticism of how CNBC defends the big financial guys.

To watch CNBC today is to enter an alternative universe, where élites are populists, Wall Street is Main Street and bank executives are the oppressed.

The Center for American Progress has produced a new study of American values.  It seeks to address the notion that we are a “center-right” country.  I’ve maintained for a long time that we are not in many ways.  I’ve also argued that asking people if they are conservative or liberal is useless, as the categories don’t predict views on key issues.  As I said yesterday, I think the term “moderate” isn’t particularly helpful to progressives.  In fact, I am not surprised that many people would choose “conservative” as a self-descriptor.  The term suggest prudence and “not radical” or calm and measured.  The same is true of “moderate.”  The CAP study addresses this self-identification a little differently, most notably, making a distinction between progressive and liberal.

In this study, however, the electorate is broken down using a more expansive five-point scale of political ideology that reflects the variety of approaches people ascribe to today. Employing this more calibrated measure, 34 percent of the country identifies as “conservative,” 29 percent as “moderate,” 15 percent as “liberal,” 16 percent as “progressive,” and 2 percent as “libertarian.” After moderates are asked which approach they lean toward, the overall ideological breakdown of the country divides into fairly neat left and right groupings, with 47 percent of Americans identifying as progressive or liberal and 48 percent as conservative or libertarian. The rest are unsure or scattered among moderate and other approaches.

It also suggests that any term does not enable you to determine how people might feel about issues.

Non-college Americans are more populist and progressive than elites on some measures of government and economics and much more conservative on cultural and national security measures.

But most important is what people say about the issues

The rise of progressivism in America is reflected more starkly in direct ratings of various ideological approaches. Today, more than two-thirds of Americans rate a “progressive” approach to politics favorably, a 25-point increase in favorability over the last five years, with gains coming primarily from those who were previously unaware of the term. “Progressive” now equals ”conservative” in terms of overall public favorability (67 percent, respectively).

I’ve only skimmed the introduction.  I’m sure the entire study is useful to read.  You can download it from this link.  But at the very least, look at the table on pages 10-11.  Quite fascinating.

MoveOn and ACORN are joining forces to pressure Democrats who voted against the bankruptcy bill that made it easier for folks to emerge from bankruptcy and allow judges to impose new conditions on delinquent mortgages.

Ads are due to run in districts of the Dems who opposed the bill.  I like the move, but not the language the progressive groups use.

“We think it is significant that progressives are joining forces to hold congressional moderates accountable for their votes affecting working families,” ACORN Executive Director Steve Kest told POLITICO. “We think that it signals how seriously we take these issues in the face of the economic meltdown.”

The liberal coalition doesn’t seem to mind taking on Democrats, though it’s unclear if the ad campaign would extend to backing more liberal Democrats in primaries against moderates like Ellsworth and Hill next year. 

"We were appalled to see some congressional Democrats side with Wall Street while families in their districts are struggling to stay in their homes," said Robert Greenwald, president of Brave New Foundation, an organization spearheading the effort. "That is just unconscionable."

“Moderates” is not a word you want to use against your opponents.  “Moderate” hardly sounds bad.  Progressives shouldn’t use it against anti-middle class, pro-bank, reactionary Democrats. 

And while they’re at it, they should insist Politico refer to them as “progressives,” not “liberals.”  “Liberal” implies a lack of standards, values or limits, whereas progressive implies moving forward, making things better.

For the most part, “moderates refers to wishy-washy Democrats afraid of their own shadows, as this story suggests.  To turn its back on labor after all the unions did to elect Obama and many congressmen and women and senators is unconscionable.  Even if you think workers should be able to have a secret ballot, “card check” is something labor unions earned, and they shouldn’t be denied.

You might be criticized in it.  Everybody else is.  Steve Pearlstein woke up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday.

Also, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post reviews the recent CNBC criticism, most of which I had posted here, but he adds his own thoughts, which in a rare switch, I agree with.

I have a lot of respect for CNBC’s top journalists. And you could deliver a similar indictment of financial journalists overall — that with some exceptions, they operated on the assumption that the giant banks and mega-corporations were on sound footing and whatever risks they faced were manageable. The most egregious failure, in my view, was failing to fully report on the drastic cutbacks in federal regulation — the SEC’s shift to virtual voluntarism and the rise of a shadow banking system that sliced and diced and swapped paper beyond the reach of the authorities.

Too many of CNBC’s guests are fund managers with an interest in talking up stocks and analysts whose investment houses do business with corporate America.

Well, I’ll go this far with Kurtz.  I will assume that, given their backgrounds and education, that many CNBC journalists could be “top,” for which they should have our respect.  And not all of them inject their opinions.  And some, most notably Dylan Rattigan and Steve Liesman, occasionally inject a progressive opinion, which I like, but is no more defensible. 

Perhaps, it’s the leaders of CNBC who should first be faulted for telling the anchors to inject their opinions.  But until they track back to being good, objective, investigative journalists, I’m withholding my respect.