This just in: American media outlets are suffering a breakdown in the free-flow of accurate information.

Just as the pipelines of credit have been clogged by bad assets on the balance sheets of American banking institutions, creating severe downward pressure on the economy, so also are many of America’s old-guard news and information outlets clogged with conjecture, triviality, and inaccurate information - - creating a perfect environment for an “uninformed electorate.”

And if there was ever a time that the American people needed a “rescue plan” to be implemented by the new alternative media, that time is now.

The recent train wrecks on both Wall Street and Capitol Hill - - and the ways in which they have been portrayed - - illustrate this media meltdown. With presidential candidates traversing across the country over the past 2 years blaming “fat cat executives” for banking failures, many news outlets have been content to simply regurgitate the political rhetoric without even attempting to contextualize what has been happening before our eyes.

Thus, we have many Americans - - how many is unknown, but likely many millions - - actually believing that the failures of lending institutions were all caused by “corporate greed” and “predatory lenders.” It’s likely that many of these Americans know nothing about how lenders have been pressured by government over the past many years to make loans to risky and lower-income borrowers, under the auspices of “fair” and “affordable housing,” and how these government-induced, high-risk loans have in part led to bank failures.

But Americans do know that lending institutions have failed, and that these failures are hurting the overall economy, and that they are scared about the economy. And Barack Obama has the anecdote for our fears: government will take care of us all. Obama has now begun criticizing John McCain’s “risky” plans for “de-regulation” of lending institutions, and is proposing more, “tougher” regulation.

But where is the big old media on this one? There seems to be no interest in the fact that over the past five years, the Bush Administration and several key Republicans in the Congress (John McCain being one of them) have been pushing for more regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not less. Indeed, in 2003, the New York Times labeled Bush’s regulatory proposals as "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago."

But guess who opposed the Bush Administration’s regulatory proposals? Obama’s fellow Democrat Barney Frank, who is now Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. In 2003, Frank rebuffed the Bush regulatory proposals, saying "These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis…The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." Continued...