FDIC sputters responding to YouTube

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation still hasn't learned how to fight fire with fire. When a YouTube video flourished on the Internet made a phony charge, the FDIC responded the only way it knew how--with a printed statement.

Still unschooled in the power of social networking, the FDIC failed to rebuff the video that asserted the agency's sale last year of the assets of the failed bank IndyMac to a group of private investors was a "sweetheart deal."

"It is unfortunate but necessary to respond to blatantly false claims in a web video that is being circulated" about the creation of OneWest Bank out of the assets of IndyMac, the agency's chief spokesman, Andrew Gray, said in the written statement late Friday.

In the statement, Gray went on to say that the video "has no credibility" and was replete with "falsehoods."

Overall, it's just another case of the power of social media. Although the Obama administration is making great headway with the 21^st century means of communicating, the lesson has not yet filtered across every federal agency. Until it does, it will have a difficult time refuting false information that comes barreling across the Internet.

For more on the FDIC and YouTube:
- see this New York Times article

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