Dean: You could probably draw up a great essay looking at the systematic ways in which ideological phrases like "free trade" and "protectionism" have and have not been used among the major news producers recently.

Keep hammering at the WaPo.

Pretty amazing the level of hubris at that rag. Can't help but think that you are trying the impossible. Kudos to you for keeping up the fight.

"Only two things are infinite, the Universe and human stupidity...and I'm not sure about the Universe."

-Albert Einstein

Dean,

Need more complete info as you could be wrong stating that "In addition, the government is granting guarantees of bank and money market deposits at no cost to the financial institutions who are benefiting."

Are you refering to the Temp Liq. Gty Program? The money market funds gty?

There's a fee for the TLGP (the fair cost might be debatable, but there's a cost).

Accurate reporting?

It's Class War. The Post hacks understand this. The liberal crowd still doesn't get it and that's why nobody cares about Dean Baker's posts.

This story mindlessly repeats the usual phony free-trade arguments. It said "Trade restrictions imposed by countries trying to protect domestic industries in the 1930s, for instance, escalated into a global trade war that deepened and prolonged the Great Depression." Really? Then how come FDR's Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, negotiated a number of concessionary trade agreements during the Great Depression?

If protectionism is growing worldwide, it is because the financial crisis and its bad effects are growing worldwide.

Thus, the first thing to do, is to correct that crisis. Once done, the protectionism will decrease by itself.

So, the Washington Post, instead of decrying the growth of protectionism today, would do better in decrying the grow of the financial crisis.

But to do so, would also be decrying the financial-Wall Street-system. And Wall Street is a "sacred cow": it cannot be hurt in any manner.

In a word, what the Washington Post is doing,
is a Wall Street protectionism !

Let me echo above with "Keep hammering at the WaPo" Dean.

I find WaPo's not so subtle racism offensive.

Or am I the only one who has noticed that a 700,000,000,000 bailout for white guys on wall street get's a warm WaPo hug, while the "highly integrated" UAW gets the cold shoulder?

I'm hard pressed to explain it without using color & income as discriminating factors.

S Bernnan: I see it as "Old White Money" vs. U&I.

Professor Baker limits his comments about about subsidies for the banks to the implicit subsidy of about USD 35 bn. Steve Waldman over at interfluidity actually suggests that the subsidy is much higher if you look at the value of the interest paid by the Fed on bank reserves:
"Interest rates are, for the moment, excruciatingly low. But a subsidy to the banking system, once put into place, will be quite hard to dislodge. So, let's imagine that the Fed will pay interest on bank reserves in perpetuity, that it will pay such interest at or near the risk-free short-term interest rate, and that the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet is more or less permanent. How large a subsidy to the banking system do the interest payments on reserves represent? Some problems are arithmetically challenging, but not this one. The present value of a perpetual stream of market-rate interest payments is precisely the amount of the principal. Therefore, the present value of the Fed's de facto commitment to pay interest to banks on $800B of freshly created reserves is $800B. We fought and wailed and gnashed our teeth over potentially overpaying for TARP assets. Meanwhile, we are quietly allowing the Fed give away, as a direct, literal subsidy, more than the entire $700B that Paulson was allowed to play with. Note there is no question about this being an "investment": The interest payments that the Fed is now making to banks on its suddenly expanded balance sheet are not loans. The banks owe taxpayers absolutely nothing in return for this windfall."
http://www.interfluidity.com/posts/1229908180.shtml