That 'Electronic Bank Run'? Didn't happen.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2009/02/11/kanjorski-and-the-money-market-funds-the-facts

by eli • 17 years ago

142 24 17 years ago

eli5• 17 years ago

I don't know why so many people gave so much credibility to an off-the-cuff remark from a virtually unknown PA congressman.

newt0311• 17 years ago

Sensationalism. It also infects the media. interesting essay on the same by Crichton: Why Speculate? : http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-whyspeculate.html

maximilian• 17 years ago

I just read the whole thing. Very interesting - A good read to bookmark for later if you don't have time now.

Tangurena• 17 years ago

His remarks got that credibility because of the rush and secrecy used to bail out the institutions last year. Kanjorski isn't the only legislator that was told "the economy will crash if you don't pass this RIGHT NOW!" Like the urgency to invade Iraq in 2003, there won't be any direct quotes by administration people claiming "DOOM!" while at the same time, every utterance, every speech, and every interview was carefully crafted to give the message of "DOOM!"

And since the stories of why such drastic measures had to be taken immediately made little to no sense to the public, people had to fill in the gaps with pieces of stories that indeed made sense to them.

jonknee• 17 years ago

Perhaps because he's on the Financial Services Committee and Capital Markets Subcommittee and gets personally briefed by Paulson. That's a lot closer to the source than a Portfolio.com blogger.

mattmcknight• 17 years ago

It immediately seemed false to me. Still, my initial suspicion was that he was being lied to by Paulson's crew, not that he was cribbing unsourced figures from the NY Post.

eli5• 17 years ago

This also highlights the key difference between journalists and the vast majority of bloggers.

A whole lot of people just posted Kanjorski's video with a few breathless comments. Porfolio blogger Felix Salmon actually took the time to critically examine the claim.

biohacker422• 17 years ago

Hmm.. so you've never seen a real professional journalist sensationalize and oversimplify a story?

And you've never seen a blogger fact check a story?

It seems to me the majority of bloggers AND journalists are crap and the exceptions are good.

msg• 17 years ago

90% of journalism is crap. But then, 90% of everything is crap.

h/t Ted Sturgeon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

eli5• 17 years ago

Huh? I am linking to the blogger who fact checked this story. That was kinda my whole point. The Portfolio link is a blog post, dude.

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

one of the main problems with the blogosphere is that people just cite each other as evidence of legitimacy. When I said that this story was linkbait crap someone linked me to a different site that was using the exact same video for justification. I don't want democracy to infect the web like it has infected science and everything else. A lot of people agreeing with you means nothing. It might have meant something in the ancestral environment, when convincing everyone made you more powerful within the tribe. But we don't live in tribes anymore.

davidw• 17 years ago

> A lot of people agreeing with you means nothing.

Of course, that depends entirely on why they agree with you. Perhaps they have independently verified what you have to say, or otherwise arrived at the same conclusions, and agree with you because of that. The problem is the 'information cascade' when more people start agreeing with you just because "all those other people do too".

MaysonL• 17 years ago

This also highlights the key difference between journalists and the vast majority of bloggers.

Of course, if you read the article, you might notice the following about the source of the story:

Would you believe: the Sunday New York Post, which on September 21 published a story headlined "Almost Armageddon" featuring this paragraph:

According to traders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, money market funds were inundated with $500 billion in sell orders prior to the opening [on Thursday]. The total money-market capitalization was roughly $4 trillion that morning.

eli5• 17 years ago

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I wasn't trying to imply that dead tree media is inherently better than online media. (And certainly not the NY Post)

One sentence in a tabloid apparently led to a youtube clip which led to a huge number of blog posts. Until, finally, one blogger took the time to fact check it.

jonmc12• 17 years ago

Wait.. if this were true it would mean that politicians embellish facts to promote an agenda. Can it be?

b1tr0t• 17 years ago

Journalist, news network or blogger -- it all comes down to brand. "Do you trust the source?", for millions, Fox news is a "trusted source" in spite of published memos from the business side telling editorial staff to change stories. I haven't seen a trust system implemented on the web I'd have confidence in to resolve to automatically suggest a trust weight either.

eli5• 17 years ago

I disagree. The Portfolio piece has specific, verifiable facts that contradict the story that had been circulating.

Verifiable facts with citations always trump vague unsourced rumors.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

This seems like an unusual charge to make against a national news organization, so I googled into this last night.

Got a link? All I could find were the 33 memos put out by a VP in charge of all news content and an attack piece being promoted by a political group and a few former employees. I also found Fox's challenge to release all internal memos if other organizations do the same. What I didn't find was mainstream collaboration that reporters were directed to change news content.

I like studying the media in general (used to do some reporting) and while it seems fashionable by some to slam Fox, this is the first I've seen of anything tangible. So I'd love to hear more about it if you've got anything.

mjnaus• 17 years ago

And just as fast as the first populist post went up, up goes another one...

zenocon• 17 years ago

Really? It seems this guy's principle argument is summed up as, "Remember where we're at here: the end of the longest week in financial-market history, when no one -- traders, reporters, Congressmen, you name it -- was getting much if any sleep. Simple errors can easily be made, numbers can get fuzzy, everything was moving very fast and confusingly."

I'm not saying it did or did not happen, but I am convinced that after reading that entry I'm not any more convinced of what really happened.

ensignavenger• 17 years ago

Actually, he cited several data sources that agree that it didn't happen.

That 'Electronic Bank Run'? Didn't happen.

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