Thursday, March 26, 2009

CNBC you have to report TRUTH… FIX CNBC!!

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If the Jon Stewart vs. Jim Cramer fiasco wasn’t enough to convince you that some content changes are due at CNBC, I’m not sure what will.

As I’ve said a few times here at SF and around the blogosphere, the CNBC we have today isn’t the CNBC that I knew 10 years ago as people say it to me.  There is a larger focus on sensationalism and talking heads debating themselves rather than reporting business news.

I’m not a believer that over the top debates and guest speakers arguing with seasoned reporters is proper etiquette for a business network.

I have been telling people that over the past 2-3 years, that what is being reported in the television are not the truth and its just a window dressing to fool or exploit all of us as we think they know everything and we don’t know anything. Well, I think now atleast people will start giving a year to my thoughts with JON STEWART bringing out the truth through humor and his comedy to the public.

If you feel the same way, or just want to put a warning shot across their bow, please consider signing the FixCNBC.com petition.

If getting called out for their lack of ethics by a channel who’s most notable show contains 4 foul-mouthed 4th graders (aka - Southpark), then maybe a petition of a few hundred thousand disgrunted viewers can shake things up a bit.

Treasury Officials Who Missed $8 Trillion Housing Bubble Still Haven't Noticed It

If the NYT description of the Treasury Department's bank rescue plan is accurate, then this should have been the headline to the article. The article reports that the Treasury Department is confident that it will not lose money by buying mortgage backed securities at far above their market price because: "the government can hold those mortgages as long as it wants, officials are betting the government will be repaid and that taxpayers may even earn a profit if the market value of the loans climbs in the years to come."

House prices are currently falling at more than a 20 percent annual rate. If they fall another 20 percent in real terms, they will be back at their trend level. A further 20 percent decline will hugely increase the percentage of mortgages that are underwater, reducing the value of mortgage backed securities from their current level. There is no obvious reason that house prices should then again rise above their trend level.

The failure of people like Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner to recognize the $8 trillion housing bubble led to this crisis. It appears as though they somehow still don't understand it. This fact should have been the headline of the news article since their continued failure to undersatnd the housing market could cost taxpayers trillions of dollars and further damage the economy.

NYTimes ignores protectionism for banks

If the U.S. government were to hand checks for tens of billions of dollars to the domestic auto industry or the steel industry to help them survive, presumably it would be viewed as a form of protectionism. However, when the checks to the banking industry, for some reason the question of protectionism never arises.

The NYT had a front page story warning of the rise of protectionism. Remarkably, it makes no mention of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the U.S. government is paying to keep the financial industry afloat. All the claims about the inefficiencies of protectionism apply as much to banking as they do to the auto and steel sector (we can use the same graph for all three), however protectionism for the banks never seems to raise any concerns in the media.