Thursday, March 05, 2009

Ponzi Network

I'm not sure how long this video will be available, since Viacom always pulls them from YouTube, so go to this HuffPo link if it disappears below, but Jon Stewart's evisceration of CNBC in the wake of Wall Street mouthpiece Rick Santelli's Daily Show guest appearance cancellation is one of the finest and most visceral explanations of everything wrong with today's financial cable news ever created -- better than any created by any news organization:



And to think it was on a "comedy" show...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. this is the most significant TV reporting of the last few months. The result... nothing.

Does it get lost in the 24/7 din or do we just not care.

Anonymous said...

CNBC is primarily a cheerleader for the Wall Street. Nobody takes most of these guys seriously (and Cramer is a psycho & liar). Right now they're trying to find some way to keep from losing 50% of their audience post-meltdown. Hence the screaming (Think about how Lou Dobbs resurrected his pointless career when he hit on the idea of appealing to white male halfwit xenophobes.)

That being said, the one CNBC guy who has bigtime credibility is David Faber, who's an actual financial journalist, and a good one.

The reason I bring this up is Faber has a 2-hr special running at various times on CNBC on the meltdown called "House of Cards."

If you want a very good layman's explanation of the chain of events that got us here HoC is for you. Beware: it's not for the easily outraged.

(ps: If you're just looking for the short answer to "who's to blame?", I'll save you some time: Alan Greenspan. Future historians will liken his ascendance to Fed Chairman to that of a voodoo healer becoming Surgeon General.)