Analyzing the Rhetoric

This week in English class, we discussed rhetorical analysis and how rhetoric is used to persuade an audience. After a week of high profile drama about the housing crisis in the news, I found a McClatchy article by Greg Gordon about the former Secretary of the Treasury and how his action (or inaction in this case) helped Goldman Sachs instead of millions of people facing foreclosure. With all the confusion the American public is facing over this issue, I thought it was a great subject to pull apart and examine.

A major part of the discussion in class was about the use of “proofs” used to persuade the audience. There was evidence of those proofs - ethos, pathos, and logos early on in the article. Various credible sources are used as ethos to shed light on the decisions made by the Secretary and the Fed Chairman, among others. Gordon uses accounts from different sources, including FBI director Chris Swecker, mortgage broker Michael Blomquist, and former senior thrift regulator William Black; who testified before Congress and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on the subject.  Black gives a scathing critique of the Secretary, citing his years of experience as an executive at Goldman, the same company that helped create the dysfunction in the market, and stood to gain the most as nearly everyone else reaped the consequences. It even uses a list created by regulators of the actions that could have been taken to hedge against the bad loans that were created to fuel the crisis.

The vast majority of Americans are still outraged and cynical about the government’s role in allowing the housing bubble to grow and burst. Gordon uses pathos to tap into those very emotions, referring to Secretary Paulson’s or the government’s “failure” to act or help stabilize the crisis. Failure is used repeatedly, and implies that the administration directly or indirectly allowed much of the financial fallout.

Gordon used “logos” or compiled logical reasoning to drive home the point about the ties between the Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs. He noted that not only did inaction against mortgage fail to stop the housing sector; it kept money going to that bank, and several others on Wall Street. He backtracked through the events, following Paulson’s lingering ties to Goldman, even after leaving as an executive. He tied this to the fact that Paulson should have and almost certainly knew about the bank’s practices and how they posed an existential threat to the financial system as a whole.

The article was very insightful and eye-opening, calling greater attention to the mistakes that were made and the opportunities missed to avoid the great recession. Although some politicians went out of their way shift the blame to other parties, this article is very compelling and raises serious questions about the Treasury, the banks, and the Federal Reserve.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/10/101753/inaction-by-treasurys-paulson.html