The New York Times article in the December 12 issue, “It’s Hard to Summon Sympathy for Big Banks,” actually does a very good job of summoning up sympathy for big banks. Aw, shucks, implies theTimes, they just made a few silly mistakes – or, as the article puts it:

“it is not a crime to make stupid mistakes, and much of what happened in the years before the financial crisis was more foolish than venal”.

That is not only special pleading; it is factually incorrect. It is also an astonishingly brazen lie, since it is inconceivable that the writer of this article does not know that our biggest banks were found to have committed – or have confessed to committing – thousands upon thousands of real anddeliberate crimes, some of which rank among the largest financial crimes in history (such as LIBOR falsification, phony mortgage scams, and the $800 billion worth of drug money laundered by HSBC, to give just three examples).

Yes, we expect to see corporate-friendly spin from the Times — but outright lying to prop up the myth of corporate innocence seems like something new. Could it be that the New York Times editors aren’t fact-checking their business articles anymore? Or have they simply been asked not to?