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McGraw-Hill Tells Kids: "Good Intentions Caused The Financial Crisis"
Looks like someone's been reading a few too many of those Republican talking points on the financial crisis.
You may not have been aware of this, but apparently "good intentions caused the financial crisis." That's the headline of a helpful educational primer for kids on the website of McGraw-Hill, a major provider of school textbooks.
In places, the writeup, which explains the historical background of the push for increased home-ownership, and offers a cogent explication of mortgage-backed securities, is quite helpful.
But it's hard to tell this story properly if, for political reasons, you have to steer clear of any explicit acknowledgment that the deregulation of the financial system -- out of a mix of misguided ideology and fealty to corporate interests -- was a major contributor to the collapse. Nor does the flat-out greed and borderline fraud of many major Wall Street banks enter into McGraw-Hill's telling of the story.
Still, maybe we're being too harsh. After all, everyone tried their hardest.
Bonus note: In case you forgot, we told you last month about how McGraw-Hill pulled out of a book deal with major financial blogger (and TPM friend) Barry Ritholtz, after learning that the book, Bailout Nation, would slam Standard & Poor's, the credit-ratings agency owned by McGraw.
Josh
Zachary
You can see how power protects itself.
March 10, 2009 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
We do not have freedom of speech, it was sold to a corporate media conglomerate.
March 10, 2009 10:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dear Harold W. McGraw III,
Please stop lying to my children.
Sincerely,
Twayn
March 10, 2009 11:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
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..............Beware the ides of March
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......George W Bush to be arrested this weekend
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...WAR CRIMINAL
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March 11, 2009 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Oracle of Essex read it in the entrails
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...The End Is Nigh
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..The Terror is Over
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.God Bless these
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.United States of
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....America
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.and all the good
..it once was.
..May the phoenix
.rise from the ashes
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.'nil carborundum illegitimi'
March 11, 2009 12:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't want to scare the kids, doncha know.
Anyway, by the time these books come out, the current conditions will have changed one way or another and the books will be obsolete.
The way the publishing cycles go, social studies textbooks were wrapping up production in the fall of 2001 and the publishers had to scramble to find some way to at least acknowledge the attacks of 9/11. At least one showed heroic firefighters but not planes crashing into buildings and the ruins of WTC and the Pentagon. Certainly nothing about the political and religious motives of the attackers. Nationally distributed textbooks are bland and generic because the publishers have to find some middle ground that won't offend school boards in California and Texas, the largest markets for textbooks. Texas state school boards are conservative, California school boards are generally more liberal statewide.
March 11, 2009 12:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
If you've read Lies My Teacher Told Me, you would certainly not be surprised by McGraw-Hill's willingness to push this kind of garbage.
March 11, 2009 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
And I suppose this new "kid's" book was written by the conservatives? History always has a way of being massaged in textbooks and books for children. Why not call the publisher on this -- unless it would put them in a bad spot with their lobbyists.
March 11, 2009 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't worry folks, thanks to No Child Left Behind, our kids won't learn any of this. Thanks to teaching solely for standardized test preparation, schools no longer teach History, Civics, or Economics as they should.
March 11, 2009 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
You all know that McGraw-Hill is the main publishing company that supplies America's public schools with all the state standardized testing, right?
They have and had a huge stake in NCLB being adopted thus profiteering from duping our politicians and educators into thinking that testing was how you measure learning...They have been making billions and billions off of NCLB. I would love to see some investigative reporting into their lobbying practices prior to the passing of NCLB.
I would love more than anything to see the demise of this corporation.
March 11, 2009 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow! Who would have thought a school book publisher would print something less than truthful!
March 11, 2009 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
The text seems to be adapted from the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
Some of the phrasing is identical.
March 11, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Greed is not a good intention. Wall street power brokers do not value "good intentions" highly.
March 11, 2009 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
it's never too soon to start the brain washing.
what, the credit rating companies were in bed with the banks?
no. it was all good intentions.
March 11, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink