US reporting on the eurozone crisis

RT America is one online alternative channel available that focuses on a US audience. RT, formerly known as Russia Today, is a Russian state-owned company. How independent it is from the point of view of media critics and scholars, I'm not sure. I'm mainly familiar with it through The Alyona Show that comes Monday-Friday, hosted by Alyona Minkovski. She has a variety of guests, ranging from left-leaning commentators to Heritage Foundation libertarian free-marketers and public figures like Lawrence Wilkinson. I was listening to one of their financial shows the other day and one of the commentators was babbling on a world government being created, which he also described as the "new world order", which of course sounds like Ron Paul/Patriot Militia kind of conspiracy thinking.

(Update: The comment was from Max Keiser, prompted by Stacy Herbert, on the Keiser Report Ep. 225 12/20/2011, starting around 8:50)

Alyona reported on the eurozone crisis on the 12/21/2011 edition of her show. In this video, she chides the US mainstream media for largely ignoring the European economic/financial crisis, beginning around 2:30 (MSM: Oblivious to Eurozone Crisis):



In another segment of The Alyona Show, two business reporters join Alyona to discuss the eurozone issues. They reference recent alarming statements by IMF head Christine Lagarde, such as this (IMF chief Christine Lagarde warns that global economic outlook is 'gloomy' YouTube date 12/15/2011 from Telegraph TV):



That Alyona Show discussion segment, Should EU Leaders Gets Hands Out of Crisis?, is here:

Lauren Lyster of RT America's Capital Account basically says she doesn't really understand the crisis, but she thinks that EU governments should just stop trying to do anything to save either the banks or euro. Lyster often sounds like she's looking for a gig on CNBC or even FOX News for her next career move.

Simone Foxman of Business Insider came off as better-informed than Lyster. But Foxman blundered in saying blithely that American banks are financially sound. With Bank of America skating on the edge of financial survival and with the MF Global bankruptcy, why would she say that? Even Lyster flagged that comment as problematic, rightly mentioning the large but unknown risk exposure big American banks have on financial derivatives.



This was a disappointing segment, especially coming with the buildup that we're seeing stuff the mainstream media isn't telling us.

Lauren Lyster's concept that everyone in the world is as clueless as she about possible solutions to the euro crisis is really sad. Because she could read, for example, Jamie Galbraith's piece on the euro crisis, The crisis in the Eurozone Salon 11/10/2011. He links to the papers from a conference on the eurozone that provide analysis and sound suggestions for solutions, Financial Crisis in the Eurozone.

The eurozone crisis is likely to have major effects on the US economy and thereby on the politics of 2012. We could certainly use more and better reporting on it in the main US news outlets.

Tags: alyona minkovski, eu, eur, european union