The Daily Show's Mar. 4, 2009 takedown of CNBC was brilliant, biting, and funny.
Stewart's interview with Jim Cramer on Mar. 12, 2009 was one of the most serious and substantive analysis (if not the most) of the purpose of the CNBC network that I have ever seen.
Jim Cramer was way, way, way out of his league.
Jim Cramer Extended Interview
First, Cramer assumed that he was the only target. Second, he completely failed to understand Stewart's fundamental issue: that CNBC was not giving value to the people who invest in pension funds and 401Ks, that it was, rather, a shill for Wall Street. Worse, it misrepresents itself as being for the former. Cramer simply did not get it.
This was a serious and often uncomfortable interview by Stewart, but it showed just how feckless the MSM (and the blogosphere for that matter) has been when it comes to business reporting.
Showing posts with label CNBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNBC. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Jon Stewart - The Daily Show on Mar. 4, 2009 - Roasts CNBC (incl. Rick Santelli & Jim Cramer)
The Daily Show keeps getting better. Having a liberal in the White House has in no way affected its quality.
Last night's roundly deserved roast of CNBC's coverage of the stock market showed TDS at its best: a stinging montage of CNBC prognostications showing just how often, and consistently, wrong its predictions have been.
I especially enjoyed the sequences that focused on Jim Cramer. I've been watching Cramer for a couple of months now and the one constant is his inconstancy. His advice varies almost daily and rarely holds up over the long haul. (Only a few months ago, he declared Bank of America, Well Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase to be among the 5 "gold standard" banks.) Yes, I know he was a successful hedge fund manager but as such he could and did trade daily, probably almost every minute. Most of the people who watch him can't do that. He's a lot of fun to watch, but unless you have money to burn and want to buy and sell stocks all day, he's not going to help you.
The Mar. 4, 2009 montage was just one of many that Stewart's staff has put together over the past year. One recent montage I recall contrasted statements by Gibbs (Obama's press secretary) with those from prior press secretaries. Not a word's worth of difference. It takes a lot of skill and research to put together these montages. You must realize that there is something worth looking for, then locate the sound bites or videos that will support your thesis. Google and the other search engines help, but anybody who's used them for serious research knows just how hard it can be to find just what you need.
So, yes, I adore Stewart. But his staff deserve special credit for providing the material. Give Thain's bonus to them.
Last night's roundly deserved roast of CNBC's coverage of the stock market showed TDS at its best: a stinging montage of CNBC prognostications showing just how often, and consistently, wrong its predictions have been.
I especially enjoyed the sequences that focused on Jim Cramer. I've been watching Cramer for a couple of months now and the one constant is his inconstancy. His advice varies almost daily and rarely holds up over the long haul. (Only a few months ago, he declared Bank of America, Well Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase to be among the 5 "gold standard" banks.) Yes, I know he was a successful hedge fund manager but as such he could and did trade daily, probably almost every minute. Most of the people who watch him can't do that. He's a lot of fun to watch, but unless you have money to burn and want to buy and sell stocks all day, he's not going to help you.
The Mar. 4, 2009 montage was just one of many that Stewart's staff has put together over the past year. One recent montage I recall contrasted statements by Gibbs (Obama's press secretary) with those from prior press secretaries. Not a word's worth of difference. It takes a lot of skill and research to put together these montages. You must realize that there is something worth looking for, then locate the sound bites or videos that will support your thesis. Google and the other search engines help, but anybody who's used them for serious research knows just how hard it can be to find just what you need.
So, yes, I adore Stewart. But his staff deserve special credit for providing the material. Give Thain's bonus to them.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
CNBC's Santelli: Ignorant & Unprofessional Rant
CNBC, with the exception of Kudlow and this jerk, has generally had the best, if still weak, reporting on the financial crisis.
But Santelli's rant was both unprofessional and ignorant. The lack of professionalism is obvious. He's supposed to be a reporter on the floor of the NYSE [correction: Chicago Board of Trade].
Ignorant because he obviously didn't listen to Obama's speech in its entirety and because none of us will know the full details of the mortgage plan until March.
But let's deal with his "do you want your taxes to pay for your neighbor's mortgage when that person wasted money on a [fill in the blank]"? (You could use this same argument for objecting to universal health insurance, unemployment insurance, ERISA, welfare, etc.)
Let's assume the worst, that some tax dollars will go to the "undeserving", however one defines that person. That isn't alone reason to object to the plan. No system is perfect, private or public. And, sometimes, people who shouldn't get something do. The objective of any public program should be to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives.
So you still have a job and a 30-year mortgage you can afford. But you could be underwater (owing more than the house is worse). Maybe you don't care. It's your home and you figure it will eventually regain its value. But your neighbor is having trouble making the payments, maybe because one of the partners has lost a job. That person may decide, quite logically, to walk away from a house that isn't worth what is owed on the mortgage. So the house gets foreclosed. The same thing happens across the street or on the next block. All of a sudden, your home's value shrinks even more, and maybe the neighborhood starts to go downhill, too. Perhaps you don't care. Those "other" people didn't deserve any help, no matter what happens to your neighborhood as a result. This is the prototypical case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Most reasonable people, however, would prefer to live in an intact neighborhood with no foreclosure signs. Obama's proposal will specify rules for reducing mortgage payments and writing down the principal that should reduce the likelihood of mushrooming foreclosure signs in this scenario. This is a social good - even if some of the individual recipients are "undeserving".
As for the details of the plan... I suspect they will pretty much resemble what Baird has done for the Countrywide mortgages. In her program, if you don't have a job or can't afford to pay a mortgage (however renegotiated), you will lose your house. You also have to live in the house - so the program won't help speculators. Allowing judges to force a cram down in bankruptcy is widely disliked (because a first mortgage is a special kind of contract and if you allow this contract to be broken there will be long term financial consequences). I'm not qualified to judge the long term consequences. But, short term, the idea is to have a stick in the wings so the people holding the mortgages will be more inclined to negotiate reduced payments or some kind of mortgage write down. And, finally, as I recall, Baird's program uses a NPV calculation to determine if the changes to principal and interest make financial sense to the owner when compared to the cost of a foreclosure. It it doesn't, foreclosure is the only solution.
In short, the plan won't help everybody. Foreclosures will still occur. And most of the "undeserving" will, indeed, lose their houses. The goal of the program is to help the rest, the ones who are in trouble through no real fault of their own.
But Santelli, like most ideological Republicans, doesn't care about the public good. And he's gotten a lot of press for his rant which he no doubt counts as a personal good.
But Santelli's rant was both unprofessional and ignorant. The lack of professionalism is obvious. He's supposed to be a reporter on the floor of the NYSE [correction: Chicago Board of Trade].
Ignorant because he obviously didn't listen to Obama's speech in its entirety and because none of us will know the full details of the mortgage plan until March.
But let's deal with his "do you want your taxes to pay for your neighbor's mortgage when that person wasted money on a [fill in the blank]"? (You could use this same argument for objecting to universal health insurance, unemployment insurance, ERISA, welfare, etc.)
Let's assume the worst, that some tax dollars will go to the "undeserving", however one defines that person. That isn't alone reason to object to the plan. No system is perfect, private or public. And, sometimes, people who shouldn't get something do. The objective of any public program should be to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives.
So you still have a job and a 30-year mortgage you can afford. But you could be underwater (owing more than the house is worse). Maybe you don't care. It's your home and you figure it will eventually regain its value. But your neighbor is having trouble making the payments, maybe because one of the partners has lost a job. That person may decide, quite logically, to walk away from a house that isn't worth what is owed on the mortgage. So the house gets foreclosed. The same thing happens across the street or on the next block. All of a sudden, your home's value shrinks even more, and maybe the neighborhood starts to go downhill, too. Perhaps you don't care. Those "other" people didn't deserve any help, no matter what happens to your neighborhood as a result. This is the prototypical case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Most reasonable people, however, would prefer to live in an intact neighborhood with no foreclosure signs. Obama's proposal will specify rules for reducing mortgage payments and writing down the principal that should reduce the likelihood of mushrooming foreclosure signs in this scenario. This is a social good - even if some of the individual recipients are "undeserving".
As for the details of the plan... I suspect they will pretty much resemble what Baird has done for the Countrywide mortgages. In her program, if you don't have a job or can't afford to pay a mortgage (however renegotiated), you will lose your house. You also have to live in the house - so the program won't help speculators. Allowing judges to force a cram down in bankruptcy is widely disliked (because a first mortgage is a special kind of contract and if you allow this contract to be broken there will be long term financial consequences). I'm not qualified to judge the long term consequences. But, short term, the idea is to have a stick in the wings so the people holding the mortgages will be more inclined to negotiate reduced payments or some kind of mortgage write down. And, finally, as I recall, Baird's program uses a NPV calculation to determine if the changes to principal and interest make financial sense to the owner when compared to the cost of a foreclosure. It it doesn't, foreclosure is the only solution.
In short, the plan won't help everybody. Foreclosures will still occur. And most of the "undeserving" will, indeed, lose their houses. The goal of the program is to help the rest, the ones who are in trouble through no real fault of their own.
But Santelli, like most ideological Republicans, doesn't care about the public good. And he's gotten a lot of press for his rant which he no doubt counts as a personal good.
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