 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Breaking news: The Sun rose this morning! Film at 8, 9, 10, 2, 5, and 11! by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 05/13/2013, 5:06am PDT | ||||
 |
 |
|||
| Has anyone noticed the tendency of the lamestream media to overhype the wrong stories and trivialize the ones that they can't show on TV or are too complicated? You can get dramatic video of the bombing of the Boston Marathon or of the cops running around like chickens with their heads cut off looking for Chris Dorner, but where was the serious coverage of the 2008 bank bailouts or the rerun happening now over in Cypus? Well, a complicated story about credit default swaps and the solution used, which was satirized in an IBM commercial where the medieval king wants to chase off the dragon, and the (highly paid) consultant suggests putting canvas bags that clink on trebuchets, and the king says, "you want me to throw money at the problem?" is not something you get sexy video about and so gets nearly nothing on TV. About the only thing that covered it was HBO's excellent movie dramatizing the bailout, Too Big To Fail, which took two hours to show how bad things were and how bad they could have been if something wasn't done.
Yeah, in the newspaper industry - probably all media - they have the motto "if it bleeds, it leads" shows, bad news does get prime coverage, the fact remains that if it doesn't have some interesting pictures it's unlikely you'll see it on television or notice much more than superficial coverage. But get interesting video, like that comet explosion over Russia a few weeks ago, they'll overhype the shit out of it until even hard-core news junkies are tired of hearing about it. I suspect the motto of television news is, or should be, "If you can't see it, you won't see it," "If you can't see it, you won't see anything about it," or "if you can't see about it, you won't hear about it either." Let's give an example. Gas - and by "gas" I mean natural gas, the stuff you'd use in your stove or in your furnace if you have gas heating, so you know what "gas" I'm talking about - is very cheap in the U.S., is about $4 per 1,000 cubic feet or $4/MCF (they use "M" for 1000 the way computer people use K for 1000 or 1024 depending on context). By comparison, Europe routinely pays about $15/MCF, mostly because they have to buy it from Russian companies like Gazprom, a not really reliable supplier since it ships through pipelines that run through (often former Soviet) countries that often owe it (lots of) money for their own bills and those countries are often close to broke as it is, so they tend to be slow paying or take a long time to pay because they're on very thin finances, and sometimes Gazprom turns the tap off - especially at the worst times, like the middle of a cold winter - when the gas bills get too high. Which also cuts off Europe's gas supply. Has anyone considered how destabilizing this sort of situation could be? Is it the sort of thing that could trigger wars? Hell yes! And this could be big for the U.S. and possibly mean lots more employment here, if we could figure a way to ship it cheaply. All those "empties" of shipping containers coming to the U.S. full of Chinese goods and left here because they're not worth shipping back empty, if they could be converted into storage objects for gas at $8/MCF there's a big profit (twice American price), potential for lots of American jobs, and huge opportunity for the U.S. to fix the problem of its balance of payments issues, allow Europe to get gas from a reliable supplier for half what they're paying now (and give the Russians a kick in the nuts since they need that money badly and we can undercut them on price, making them less likely to have money to support military adventures). Or did you hear much or get the significance how Cypress' banks did the same thing as the banks here did during the 2008 housing crisis, run out of money, only it was unreliable (here we go again) Russian borrowers that they're having trouble getting funds out of, and thus, they ran out of cash, and since the countries in Europe gave up the most critical part of their sovereignty, the ability to print money (they gave that to the European Central Bank (ECB) when they converted their currency to the Euro), the governments there can only borrow money or tax people to pay for it. Cyprus is an island and a big tax haven (taxes are very high in Europe and places you can stash money so it can't be taxed are very attractive), so Cyprus went after the only source of cash they could get to to bail out their banks, they essentially confiscated (again, it's more complicated than just stealing it, the money was force-invested in some sort of government bonds which are probably not worth even a fraction what they're claiming) as much as 60% of "rich" investors savings in its banks over 100,000 Euros (about US$145,000) and put restrictions on people with less than that to withdraw money. Nor has anyone mentioned the interconnection between the two, the one thing that's got potential going to save Cyprus as its only remaining asset beyond tourism, which will not be enough to support its economy (it's now destroyed as a tax haven, rich people will never trust them again) is it has a huge gas field about 22 miles (I think the figure was around 43 kilometers) off their shores, a field which potentially has upwards of US$40 billion in gas available and can be extracted cheap enough and quickly enough to switch to it from Russia. This, most likely is the big reason Cypress is going to get some sort of help from the ECB in exchange for access to that rich source of gas and thus it could be a much more reliable source than getting it from Russia (and another way to kick them in the nuts for being greedy, or by cutting off supplies at the worst possible times. There's nothing wrong with being greedy or demanding all that the traffic will bear, you just have to be prepared if and when your customers decide you're too rapacious and possibly switch to a cheaper supplier or a less costly alternative.) Yet because this sort of story can't be compressed down into 2 minute sound bites and exciting video, none of this has been covered very well or if they have covered it, at best it's been superficial and fleeting coverage in the regular mainstream media outlets. Anyone have a different take on this whole idea on how the media doesn't cover non-visual news events or on other issues about lack of coverage or the crappy way they cover news? |
||||
 |
 |
|||
|
