Earlier today, columnist Matt Yglesias ran an item accusing Paul Ryan of insider trading while in Congress.
Apparently this was something the Obama Campaign really wanted out there, because it aired on a number of lefty blogs as well as a number of what used to be called legitimate news sources..many of whom feature ex-Journalistas like Matt:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/08/paul-ryan-not...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-delong/paul-rya...
http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-ryan-insider-t...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/13/1119710/-Is-Paul-Ryan-guilty-of-inside-trading-or-just-foolish-investing
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/08/wa...
Instead of confirming anything ( of course!) Matt just followed orders and put something out there...which now, after the slander's been aired, he graciously decided to apologize for and retract:
Let me apologize. I originally had a too-credulous item here linking to a piece at The Richmonder alleging that Paul Ryan has sold bank shares after a closed door meeting with Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke on the financial crisis in 2008. As Eric Platt explains he certainly seems to have sold the shares on the same day as the meeting, but the meeting happened in the evening by which time the markets would have been closed. One can perhaps construct a scenario by which the Richmonder's theory of the case holds up, but they don't have the goods and I shouldn't have passed their analysis on with no qualification and so little scrutiny of my own.
As Brad DeLong writes, for one reason or another Ryan did quite a lot of trading of individual bank stocks in 2008 so the timing of this particularly transaction isn't particularly noteworthy when put in that context.
Given the source, I suppose we should be glad for even this much. I'm sure similar 'mistakes' are on the way.
They literally will say and do anything to get Barack Obama re-elected.
Matt Yglesias a Columnist? That's laughable!
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