Today's 'recommended read' by
James Poniewozik in
Time:
To watch CNBC today is to enter an alternative universe, where élites are populists, Wall Street is Main Street and bank executives are the oppressed. It's not surprising that a voice of opposition to the new Administration would emerge. But who would have thought it would be on a channel not owned by Rupert Murdoch?
CNBC's reaction is colored by its stressed-out day trader's focus on the short term. When ordinary people think about the economy, they think about jobs, college, retirement. Sure, the stock market affects them in the long run — but so do job security and the threat of getting wiped out by health-care bills. When CNBC considers the economy, it means Wall Street's numbers that day, that hour, that minute. CNBC may pay lip service to the long term, but it has the time horizon of a fruit fly.
This means that CNBC looks at everything, particularly politics, in terms of how it will affect "the Market." The commentators on CNBC murmur about the Market as if it were the Island on Lost: a mystic force that must be placated, lest it become angry and punish us. "The Market doesn't like ..." "What the Market wants to see is ..."
And, oooh, is the Market cranky at Obama! The Market doesn't like raising taxes on the wealthy (even if Buffett does). The Market doesn't like government health-care reform or cap-and-trade environmental policy or big budgets or limiting bonuses at bailed-out banks. And don't get the Market started on bank nationalization. That ticks the Market off!
I hope everybody noticed that as soon as the talk of 'nationalization' got serious, all of a sudden those banks reported they were making plenty of money and don't need nationalized, thank you very much. Feelin' fine, don't need none o' that stinky medicine!
It is as if — between MSNBC and CNBC — NBC News were trying to own the liberal and conservative voices of cable news. But CNBC's is a much different strain of conservatism from Sarah Palin's or Bill O'Reilly's: it is urban, club room and Mammon-oriented rather than small town, VFW hall and God-oriented. It's an ideology not exclusively beholden to party (Cramer voted for Obama), but it's an ideology nonetheless.
It's also an ideology that you'd think, given the track record of trusted financial institutions, people would be a little wary of crowing in public nowadays. But ratings are up. As the rest of the country stews over the mismanagement of insurers and banks, there's still a small, demographically appealing niche for talking heads fulminating against the "demonization" of business and being in favor of laissez-faire government.
Hey, somebody's gotta stick up for the little guy. Even, or especially, when he's the big guy.
Especially if it makes the network money. That's what it's all about.
There are some good financial reporters out there who saw and reported on what was going on that led the economy into the mess it's in.
Just like there were those who saw the truth about Iraq. The people and agencies that could have done something about it either didn't want to listen or were told not to. More likely the latter, in my opinion after eight years of watching the Bush regime wreck this country.
All I know about economics is that the richer I get, the lumpier my mattress is. I'm thinkin' of taking some of those rolls of nickels inta town and trading them in for paper money.
