That didn’t take long at all, did it?
Last week, I jokingly referred to the notion that the Tax Cuts Crashed Market. It was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the foolish notion of ascribing a single causative factor to the elaborately intricate dance that defines daily market action.
Specifically, I raised the issue of:
"The mechanisms and forces driving Markets are far too complex and
forward looking to credit or blame any single element for any given
day’s trading. Something to remember the next time you hear someone say
Markets did ____ because of ____."
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when the talking point went out and Fox News blamed the market drop on the NSA leak! Neil Cavuto — a very nice guy who I believe knows better — implied as much. And on Bulls & Bulls, that was the lead story — the show’s opening graphic asked "Nat’l Security Leaks Putting the Brakes On a New All Time High?"
That’s astonishing in so many ways, I cannot begin to list them all. (At some point in the future, I will explain why this is a homeostatic, self-correcting mechanism).
There are a few things I’ve always liked about B&B: They are one of the few shows that demonstrate technical analysis and use charts to great advantage; They also are better than most when it comes to owning up to stock picks, both good and bad. But this absurd denial of how markets work — and the obvious politicization involved — is beyond me.
Kudos to Bob Olstein and Pat Dorsey for being part of the reality based universe and correctly pointing out how irrelevant this was to the ongoing correction . . .
If Cavuto does know better, then he’s NOT a “very nice guy”…
Bulls & Bears is an interesting crowd. Pat Dorsey is a treasure of sensible advice. The Chartman is a lot like Cramer – he’s smart, he’s funny, he always has a good story but I’ll bet they are both as good as a dartboard for predictions.
Tobin Smith seems to be the most embarrassingly idiotic of the rest (they were all bearish on Google about a month ago – and Tobin suddenly broke from the pack and said “Google goes to $1000!”).
On the whole, the show mostly has entertainment value, except for Pat Dorsey.
Oh Jason, you stickler for details, the sense was (ordinarily), “ordinarily Cavuto knows better” (but seeing how close it was to Mother’s Day…or some other frailty)
No sense debunking a guy who never knows better, and such a low blow to diss him if he is no better than the rest of us, (very nice guys).
Cavuto, a near savant, but human, had a nervous day and misspoke.
The REAL reason for the market drop was the announcement of Britney Spears’ second pregnancy. The market dropped right after the news came out. Who wouldn’t be afraid of that?
If Clinton were to suddenly perform a true miracle: get out of a canoe in the middle of a lake and walk across the water to shore, Fox News would headline: Clinton Lies Again: Claims he can swim but can’t.
I think that explains blaming the stock market whackage on NSA leak. A propaganda machine does not need any basis in reality to make its claim.
Yes, Cavuto is likeable, but he also says there is no serious problem with the housing market. Amazing.
Market is in whackage mode due to gold and dollar crash and impending debt collapse and inevitable bombing of Iran and Spears’ pregnancy. It’s very simple really. Gold at $1000 before October?:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12760450/from/RSS/
Let’s see, keep pouring money into the stock market or keep the house? Decisions, decisions. Stocks are far more exposed to a housing bubble than anyone will admit. Not only are the financials going to be forced to restate and guide lower but asset equity evaporation in the housing markets will reallocate money away from stocks to “cover peoples’ short position” in housing. And now with all those HELOCs and easy credit going away there will be less real money available for investing.
So, the market tanked because of the NSA wiretapping story. Now that’s the type of in-depth analysis we’ve come to rely on from Fox Network. Heckuva job. In fact, I’d say this whole obsession with privacy and civil liberties is little more than a plot by the liberal media, trial lawyers, and radical environmentalists to crash our markets, undermine the president, and take our SUVs.
Isn’t it about time to boycott those jokers altogether, Barry?
Literally, the best that you can say about Cavuto is that he’s a party hack. Lowest form of journalist there is. Even entertainment reporters and gossip columnists are a cut above him.
I’ve never watched those idiots – NEVER EVER WATCH FOX.. but can you believe that. Policitics, pure and simple. This administration can do anything and they will make excuses for them.
In some perverse way, maybe the recent news does have something to do with the stock market. I know I am worried about what this administration will in the way of an October surprise – to keep the Dems from getting subpoena power. Iran anyone? Now that will be something that will have a direct effect on the market.
It is your patriotic duty to buy stocks! Do these guys actually believe this stuff? Or they’re just entertainers reading a script someone wrote? Or setting up the rubes for a good fleecing? Some combo thereof I suppose.
‘butt’ is part of Brenda’s last name for a reason.
of course, there are other points of view.
Frank Rich in ‘NYT’ Defends Newspapers, Rips ‘Treason’ in Washington
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002502419
Cavuto (the party hack) talks over people all the time, screw him. Alexis Glick was the real deal because she worked the floor (NYSE) and had trading desk background. Talked to Rick Santelli at the CME this guy knows his stuff. Guys if you ever get a chance to talk to Rick do not pass it up.
RED PAPER
Fox is so outlandish I have taken them out of my channel lineup. If ala carte cable ever comes about, Fox will be the first channel I quit paying for.
Dammit, we need some kind of organization like MADD. How ’bout a slogan contest? A few suggestions:
Just Say No to Spurious Correlation.
Stamp out Probabilistic Illiteracy!
Friends don’t let Friends trade off CNBC.
Bad theories don’t screw investors, bad commentators do.
Investors of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your talking heads.
You would take the ‘voice of the white house’ off your cable lineup? Sounds treasonous to me. Next thing ya know you’re gonna say you don’t watch Rush Limbaugh either. traitor.
Neil Cavuto — a very nice guy who I believe knows better — implied as much.
Oh, yes, Faux News’ Bulls and Bullsh*t, home of the infamous headline, “Is the Stock Market Patriotic Enough?”. I used to read about people proclaiming short-selling to be unAmerican and thought no-one could be that parochial. I wonder no more.
Cavuto, who seemed a competent telprompter reader in his CNBC days, has become a full-blown craven party hack. But he knows what he signed up for. Fox doesn’t hire its hosts for their individual brilliant analysis of reality — it’s a top-down, almost Soviet-style centralized organization where everyone gets their ideological marching orders daily from management and you parrot the talking points and slant events to fit the central narrative.
I know FOX is to the right of all the other networks but does that make it right wing??? Lets look objectively at their prime time line up … Hannity = Right, Combs = Left, O’Reilly = Right, Greata = Left (fyi her husband was one of the people running Kerry’s campaign). Summary 2 on each side. I could go through the rest of the lineup but it really does end up about 50/50. Now this does look very right wing when compared to the nearly 100% Left that is shown on the other “news” networks.
jab, what you really need to go through is find out why only Fox viewers belive there is a connection between 911 and Iraq.
I caught the whole “blame the stock market drop on the NSA leaks” and just shook my head. I would say that I was astonished, but I’m not — that’s pretty par for the course on Fox. I particularly like how they always phrase the opinions they run across the bottom of the screen in the form of a question, i.e. “Is Hillary Clinton a traitor?”, so it seems like they are bringing up a controversial topic, when in reality they are trying to influence the viewer with misleading “headlines”.
Anyway, some people has said “I don’t watch Fox”, which I think is a mistake. I feel that is very important to watch all types of news from all sources, so I’ll watch CNN, MSNBC, BBC…I’ve even watches some of CBN as well. I’ll watch Fox, not for the news, but so that I can get a sense of their *opinion* and *spin* — I feel it is very important to see what other people are saying, so that I can avoid tunnel-vision thinking. Same thing applies to blogs — if you exclusively stick to places like dailykos, you’ll get a skewed view of America’s opinion, so take a little bit of time to also see what everyone is talking about on powerline or redstate.org as well.
And, well, if you just *really* can’t stand the Fox Opinion Channel AT ALL, then you can always go to Newshounds at http://www.newshounds.us which has a summary of Fox’s talking points — their tagline is “We Watch Fox, So You Don’t Have To”