When did the financial "reporters" on CNBC abandon all pretense of objectivity and become unrepentent shills for failed Chicago School economics and Ayn Rand nutball individualism? Oh sure, CNBC has been infested with privatization goons, globalization buccaneers, technology vampires, resource thugs (oil maggots, eh edscan?), deregulation weasels, moral hazard delinquents, and all-around free-market jagoffs for years. Recently, however, CNBC has taken it all off.
No, I'm not talking about Fast Money. What more can be said about this pack of feral traders sporting middle-age guy pony tails, faux hipster goatees, Gordon Gecko mousse-jobs, or closely-shaven corporate raider bullet heads, who scream at us while a pulsating background threatens to trigger mass seizures in the viewing audience. No, I'm not talking about Wall Street tweaker Jim Cramer and his maniacal Mad Money. I'm not even talking about Rick Santelli and his recent anti-government jags. (Hey, at least Santelli offers an authentic cri de coeur.) No, I'm talking about the jagoffs who appear during the third hour of the "trading day" under the banner Call of the Wild.
So ok, here I am, just a little guy watching his retirement savings erode at a quickening pace (retirement, what a quaint concept). I'm watching my kid's college funds dwindle. I'm watching my neighbors putting up "for sale" signs in an increasingly futile attempt to get out from under. I'm watching my friends as their hours get cut or they lose their jobs entirely. For some reason that escapes me, I tune into CNBC from time to time to see the current price of crude, or gold, or Bank of America, or the long bond. Not that I really know what any of it means in the galactic sense. So, being the simple naif that I am, I also hope for a little clear-eyed analysis from my betters on television.
What I get, however, is crack night in the weasel hut. What I get is an ugly cohort of hysterical free-marketers screaming about creeping socialism and a federal government hell-bent on gumming up an otherwise sleek market machine with grey gooey bureaucratic inefficiency while it dispenses cash to left wing "pressure groups." What I get is the gnashing of teeth and the tearing of flesh over the decline of some abstraction that CNBC sharpie Dylan Ratigan calls "real capitalism." What? Haven't I seen this movie? Who are these hucksters and what are they selling? I offer some recent quotes--gathered casually and in no particular order--from some of these shills:
Dennis Kneale
- On Obama's outrage over excessive executive compensation: "This is nothing less than class warfare." Kneale's invocation of "class warfare" is, of course, a central trope in the free-market discourse. It is meant as a conversation stopper because--as we all know--there is no class structure in America.
- Offering a trenchant analysis of waning American industrial output: "The truth is, the auto industry destroyed the American manufacturing base."
- On the way forward: "The lust for profit is our only way out."
Larry "Creative Destruction" Kudlow
- On the recent discourse in Congress: "Does capital have any representation in Washington anymore?"
- On patiently trying to explain "bonus" pay on Wall Street: "Years ago when I was at Bear Stearns we received a base pay amounting to almost nothing, a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year."
- On the way forward: "What I'd like to see is the complete elimination of all corporate and capital gains taxes." Kudlow is a trip. He remains convinced that the Laffer Curve is something more than a doodle on a cocktail napkin.
Melissa Francis
- This "reporter" really makes me crazy with her wide-eyed omniscient-macro-transhistorical pronouncements (made with an impatient shake of the head and absolute certainty) that offer no cogent argument, no well-researched warrant, and no thoughtful analysis. In other words, no content beyond a vacuous mouthing of the talking points handed down by her shrouded overlords. Recently, Larry Kudlow admiringly described Melissa Francis as a "free-market frontier woman."
Michelle Cabruzo-Cabrera
- This "reporter" positively leers as she presents such a target-rich environment that I feel confident in saying that essentially anything that comes out of her mouth is witless and laughably ignorant. She is an embodiment of the old saying that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Here's a thoughful remark from Cabruzo-Cabrera last Friday: "I don't like this talk about regulation." Incisive, no?
Trish Reagan
- On noting that Joe Biden recently welcomed union leaders back to the White House: "The union movment prevents people from getting jobs." Ug.
Charlie Gasparino
- This action-packed "reporter" begins every third sentence with: "Here's the problem with Obama..."
Melissa Lee
- Here is the ultimate Agent Provocateur for shock doctrine. Lee seems to offer every pronouncement about government intervention with a sense of existential despair. On trader's reactions to possible nationalization of banks: "It's carange on the street...The level of anxiety has never been greater."
A couple of notes: Yes, I know, the corrosive discourse on CNBC is not limited to Call of the Wild, but indeed is shot through most of the "reporting" on this channel. Yes, I know, Steve Liesman is almost ok. Yes, this is just another rant.
Yes, I admit it, this is a rant...I offer no solutions, and make no pretense to being fair. But it seems to me that these hustlers for a failed system, these Babbitts peddling more rapacious greed and short-term gain, don't offer much in the way of solution other than a dangerously impoverishing and soul-killing ideology that has been discredited. (Although, apparently, no one has told the Congressional Republicans this yet.) I suppose that's ok. After all, this is all of a piece for cable television with its general format of commentariat driven infotainment. But I'm troubled.
It's this power of the narrative thing, you see. Recently, these marketers have passed their ideology through the filter of "fairness." (Yes, I know, they do seem to occupy an irony-free zone.) In this, Santelli serves as a prime example. In his complaint about the mortgage rescue plans put forth by President Obama, Santelli argues that this is patently unfair to all those people who "played by the rules." (This puts me in mind of Richard Nixon's invocation of the good decent people--the Silent Majority--who kept their noses clean, worked hard during the week, mowed their lawns on Saturday, got down on their knees on Sunday, and yet were eventually sold on the idea that they were being taken advantage of by the undeserving classes and their liberal allies in government. Reagan put this trope to very good use.) In this, Santelli is promoting resentment in the guise of "fairness" as he reduces complexity to a binary choice. This is what CNBC is selling all day long. The narrative becomes an exercise in misdirection that is deeply divisive, dangerously carnivorous, and--in the end--just another witless iteration of wedge-driven culture war politics.
Haven't we had enough of this kind of manichean discourse? Is this how we build community? Is this really how we build a more just, more secure society? I'm thinking not so much so.