The business media and its nostalgia for the crisis

Aaron Timms of The Week writes about the nostalgia for the economic crisis that the business news media exhibited during its 10-year anniversary.

Timms writes, “The 10th anniversary of the financial crisis has arrived with the predictable, month-long blizzard of retrospectives and commemorations in the business media. These segments have dutifully checked off all the main issues financial journalists imagine the public expects them to cover: the run-up to the crisis, the transition from the collapse of Lehman Brothers to the passage of TARP, low interest rates and their enduring impact on the global economy, the crisis’ political legacy, whether we’re any safer today, and so on. There’s been a plodding aspect to much of this coverage, but fortunately the doyens of financial news have not left viewers to starve on a grim diet of discussions about the rehypothecation of collateral. With the boring stuff out of the way, the financial media has knuckled down to the real business of this 10-year anniversary extravaganza: the reunion tour.

“This nauseating display was most conspicuous around the anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy earlier this month. That weekend, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business, and the big press outlets ran extensive interviews with all the major players of the crisis. Each one boiled down to the same question: Where were you when Lehman went down?”

Read more here.