Moronic Media Is Redundant

The "assault on bloggers" continues on the channel of stupidity, CNBC.

 "I get these moronic bloggers writing about me ... especially this one idiot at Zero Intelligence," he says. As compared to Dennis Kneale's recent rants about the same blog, it was pretty tame. But then Gasparino's ace cohort, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, stepped in and upped the ante. "'Moronic bloggers' is redundant," she chirped, apparently forgetting that a number of her former colleagues at the Times are currently employed as such or that Gasparino himself has been known to dabble in Internet name-calling, not to mention the oft-cited lesson, "Picking on kids smaller than you only to makes you look like a bully and/or insecure." Then she added for good measure: "He's probably not as handsome as you, either."

Shall we talk about the record, Charlie, Michelle and Dennis?

Your "Tout TV" channel has a stellar record.  In 2007, when the blogging community (including The Market Ticker) was screaming about absolute scams in the banking sector such as WaMu paying dividends from uncollected capitalized interest, Tout TV (your new name around here) had Cramer telling people to buy Downey Savings and Loan (formerly NYSE:DSL) as "it was certain to be bought out."  It instead went to zero, buried under the crushing weight of zero-down OptionARM loans written on property in California - a disaster that The Market Ticker and others correctly called more than a year before it destroyed several banks and dozens of lenders.

While I and others were eviscerating Angelo Mozilo and Countrywide Financial (formerly NYSE: CFC) for what was obvious (to me) financial cookery, insane inside stock sales and the impending collapse of the company Tout TV was holding court with him on your channel in "exclusive interviews" in which his gaudy suits overshadowed the claims that they'd "clean up" as the subprime market implosion would mean "less competition."  Instead, Countrywide was essentially forcibly acquired after their business imploded.  Again, Tout TV was wrong and the bloggers right.

While I and others were saying that Lehman was a zero, Tout TV gave Fuld a platform to spout that he was "well-capitalized" and was going to "burn the shorts."  The only shorts that got burned were yours - along with your cheeks when they caught fire.

While Tout TV gave a platform to Paulson's "Bazooka" comment and trumpeted it, I and others correctly pointed out that The Fed was in fact responsible for these asset bubbles and that Fannie and Freddie would (at best) wind up in conservatorship.  I in fact called both Fannie and Freddie as zeros months before it happened. Again, the bloggers were right and Tout TV was wrong.

When MBIA and Ambac were in trouble Tout TV came out daily to tell us that they were "about to be rescued", pumping the markets every time Charlie Gasbag-a-rino was said to be about to appear, and as such instead of the market deflating in a reasonably-controlled fashion when things came apart last fall the market crashed, destroying the investments of millions of Americans and giving them no chance to get out the door before the burning building collapsed on their heads.  America can thank you, Tout TV, for your incessant pumping instead of (correctly) warning people to get the hell away from the stock market - a call I made in my 2007 Year In Review Ticker.  I in fact called for the potential of a three-digit S&P 500 in December of 2007.  Again, Tout TV got it 100% wrong and the bloggers had it right.

Tout TV has incessantly gone on about how "the market is telling you that the economy is turning around", the fact remains that during 2007, particularly in October, nobody on Tout TV has 'fessed up to the fact that the market's "predictive power" on future economic trends was in fact proved dead flat wrong.  Indeed, just three months later the "roaring economy" predicted by the Stock Market was in fact declared in recession!

Tout TV has never apologized for getting it wrong, and in fact that's all Tout TV has done through this entire economic mess.  You in fact laughed people like Peter Schiff off your program in 2006 and 2007, when he and others, such as myself, Mish Shedlock and Nouriel Roubini have been proved over time to be right, and Tout TV wrong.

The worst part of it is that this didn't start in 2007.  Back in 2000 Cramer famously produced his list of "stocks you must own now" less than two months before the Nasdaq cracked; of that list he put forward most of them are today quite literally gone into the dustbin of bankruptcy, resulting in losses of 90% or more!  For this "stellar record" Cramer was rewarded with a nightly TV show on Tout TV; the Americans who had their retirement ruined by listening to him got nothing.  All through the crash of 2000-03 as I sat in municipal bonds and collected tax-free interest I saw Tout TV daily try to call a bottom that was not to come for two more years, with each rally being "the end" of the bear market. All through the Internet Bubble years we heard why companies that had no earnings (and no prospect of having them for years, if ever) were "strong buys" with never a question from Tout TV, and as the collapse deepened the stock that was a "strong buy" at $100 was "on sale at 20% off" at $80, a "screaming buy" at $50, "the buy of the century" at $20 and finally, it was time to sell at $2 - just before it was delisted.

With this last rally Tout TV has crooned about how "the recession is OVER", repeated nightly by Kneale and others.  Never mind that as I noted on Kudlow's show last week this is clearly a consumer-credit-led recession and the facts are clear: consumers have not de-leveraged to any material degree as our government's policies have prevented it, and we have also not cleared the bad debt from lender (bank) balance sheets through bankruptcy, instead choosing to sweep it under various TARPs cast all about with wild abandon to the tune of several trillion dollars.  The mathematical facts on consumer and corporate debt are what they are and are presented by The Federal Reserve on a regular basis - nobody in the media has any excuse whatsoever for failing to report these facts.

As I continue to point out you cannot fix a drunk's drinking problem with a bottle (or case!) of whiskey, yet Tout TV continues to proclaim that "restarting securitization" and "restarting lending" is the path to prosperity.  Tout TV never acknowledges that the reason we're here is that too many loans were made to too many people who can't pay them back and these loans are still there! You cannot return the economy to a durable growth path until that which caused the recession has been removed, as Japan conclusively proved more than a decade ago when they tried to do the very same thing that our government and Fed is doing today!

Tout TV may be simply an excuse to display the closest thing to an orgasm that can be legally shown on television when your "talent" verbally spoos all over the floor of the NYSE on days when the market rallies, or it may be something simpler that drives the obvious "reporting" slant: Tout TV has a parent company that is up to its neck in financial cookery that could quite easily detonate and take the firm down, creating a perverse incentive to do nothing more complicated than save their own hides!

Tout TV has attracted the attention of bloggers like me precisely because we no longer have actual journalists when it comes to financial matters, and indeed, darn few left in any area of the so-called "mainstream media."  The Bob Woodwards are symbols of a bygone era, replaced by pretty faces and bald-headed crooners with a sound board full of red buttons who have as much credibility and accuracy as the "set it and forget it" late-night infomercials or the spam for male enhancement products that ceaselessly flood email inboxes.

The hell Tout TV finds itself in is one of its own making, and one that it will only exit if and when it starts to display the sort of investigative bent that is in fact the very reason we have a First Amendment in The United States.

Until Tout TV figures it out and cuts the crap bloggers like myself and Zerohedge will perform the function that has been abdicated by those who are hopelessly compromised by the demands of corporate and government interests, having abdicated their responsibility to the American people and, unfortunately, to investors worldwide.