Rise Above, if you’re among the 99.95 percent of the country who don’t watch CNBC on a given day, is the network’s campaign against the government for not putting “politics” aside to come to a budget agreement that’s to the stock market’s liking.
It’s also an unlikely crusade, as I noted last week, from a news organization with some of the Fox-iest journalists TV personalities out there, leading lights like Joe Kernen, Rick Santelli, and Larry Kudlow.
Then there’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, who took all of two minutes on Tuesday to expose the hollowness of her own network’s shtick. Which is unsurprising since she’s written a book, blurbed by her old boss Jack Welch, about how “the Democratic Party is out of control when it comes to spending and intrusive government programs” and in which her own book jacket says her “Democrats are portrayed as union-loving, tree-hugging activists, more concerned with making government big rather than effective” in its pages.
So what happens when Caruso-Cabrera has one of those union-y arborist types on? Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva went on air on Tuesday to talk about the “fiscal cliff,” (which is really an austerity slope, but you’d never know that from CNBC) and Caruso-Cabrera blamed his appearance for dragging down the entire $20 trillion stock market. Seriously:
Here’s her quote, via Talking Points Memo:
Representative? You know what, as we’re talking the market is selling off once again,” she told Grijalva. “Every time members of Congress come on, and I’ve got to tell you sir, I think you’re contributing to the fears that we’re going off the fiscal cliff because it doesn’t sound like there’s any compromise in what you’re saying. Do you care that markets are selling off dramatically when it looks like you guys can’t come to a deal?”
Of course, it’s nuts to think that Mr. Market was hanging on every word of an obscure member of Congress being lectured by some talking head on CNBC. But exposes a peculiar combination of ignorance, narcissism, and conventional wisdom that sums up Rise Above perfectly.
It’s also a revealing look at the overall CNBC mindset: the primacy of “listening to the markets” combined with the overinflated self-importance of a TV anchor topped off with jaw-dropping misunderstandings of correlation and causation, noise and signal. You almost have to willfully misunderstand the unknowableness of the markets to be able to blab for hours a day on CNBC. Every 50 point move in the Dow has a narrative that can be turned into live TV drama at the expense of the truth.
There’s another level of wrongness here too. Grijalva came on the air at 3:33 with the Dow at 12,908. When Caruso-Cabrera accused Grijalva of tanking the market four minutes later, the Dow was at 12,894. A 14 point move in four minutes is entirely unremarkable. But as Grijalva’s segment ended, Caruso-Cabrera doubled down, saying “eighty points,” as if the Dow had fallen that much in the time he was on air.
It was actually down 20 points in that time, and pinning that decline on the political views of a minor politician who happens to be on CNBC is just flat out of line.
CNBC has been great fun lately.
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000129059
'James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, we may disagree about whether we should have a VAT or just a flat tax and gutted federal spending, But We Know What The Answer Is Not! Raising Taxes on the Wealthy.' 2:00 in.
I mean this has got to be some kind of black comedy act, am I right?
If you want to feel a little ill, listen to the Cato guy talk about the food stamp program costing too much during the last decade.
And refer to this old piece (and its infographic) for the real story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/us/welfare-limits-left-poor-adrift-as-recession-hit.html
These guys are soooo scared of the tax cuts expiring... and that's it. They don't care about the deficit. They don't care about the debt. AT ALL.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 30 Nov 2012 at 03:12 AM
"These guys are soooo scared of the tax cuts expiring."
And and you can see why, according to CNBC's reporting:
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000129316
I feel so sorry for Steve Liesman. He tries to do intelligent stuff while knucklehead Rick Santelli heckles him with lines from Amity Shlaes definitive work on the depression, The Forgotten Man.
"You're just like those LOSERS in 1934 who raised TAXES instead of GROWING THE ECONOMY."
Can he go through a day without someone punching him? How?
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 30 Nov 2012 at 04:00 AM
Dead on the mark. CNBC flatters itself.
Self-serving, self-important and self-indulgent. Hitting the Trifecta of Inside/Personality journalism at CNBC demonstrates the fallacies of aligning your company's interest with your sources.
#3 Posted by jrhmobile, CJR on Fri 30 Nov 2012 at 11:26 AM
Economists. They make websites now.
http://jobsnotausterity.org/
We should not be caring about the deficit. We should be focused on economic growth. These are not just things you say when you want to defend your big ass tax cut.
And we saw, as we left the depression, what works. And we've seen, through 3 to 4 decades of economic BS, what doesn't.
We have a choice - do the right thing or do the desired thing. CNBC does not desire a raise in tax revenues and it wants federal spending cut.
Tax hikes on the rich are no where near as contractionary as spending cuts (as these jerk CEO's from GE and the like will suddenly tell you once austerity threatens their access to the health and military money spigots).
The economic foundations for the right thing are sound. Choose to do it, goddamn it.
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 30 Nov 2012 at 03:06 PM
Ps. On the topic of depression
http://m.seekingalpha.com/article/468851
"Note that the area marked "No Man's Land", where growth is negative (recession) and debt decreases, has no data points.
Reducing deficits is a balancing act where you have to make sure that you don't kill growth when you reduce government spending. The safest way to do this is not reduce year-on-year spending but simply increase government expenditures at a slower rate than GDP is growing. Since 1940, the only year-on-year reductions have been after the end of WWII (1946-47) and the Korean War (1954) and both triggered recessions.
The U.S. is in danger of repeating this mistake."
This was in March, before we decided to talk about Grand Bargains and renewed Debt Ceiling brinkmanship.
Government austerity kills economic growth. Everybody says we need economic growth. Tax cuts and tax hikes produce little change in growth for the buck.
We can see this playing out in Europe in real time. Like why are we even debating this crap?
Reason? For some, the implications of reality are uncomfortable, therefore there is no interest in admitting reality.
But that should not be the case for journalists. The opposite should be true.
#5 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 30 Nov 2012 at 03:31 PM
On the topic of journos:
#1 http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-grand-sabotage-by-davidoatkins.html
"Part of what is so frustrating about any conversation about the "deficit" is the obviousness of the lies being told. Conservatives have a decades-long strategy that they have telegraphed since the Goldwater years. It's not complicated, and everyone in politics knows about it...
That strategy isn't just politics. It amounts to direct economic sabotage--sabotage that everyone in politics and media knows is happening...
Yet here we are again, held hostage to the same economic saboteurs using the same destructive tactics as they have for the last 40 years. And everyone paying attention knows about it.
The fact that everyone in the Village Media has bought into the deficit obsession as it were a real thing rather than simply the latest iteration of a decades-long tactic designed to further enrich the wealthy shows not just herd mentality and willful blindness. It shows a craven willingness to go along with direct economic sabotage and shameless lying in the guise of politics as usual.
It's moral tragedy on a grand scale."
#2 http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/30/fiscal-cliff-fictions-lets-all-agree-to-pretend-the-gop-isnt-full-of-it/
"It’s really amazing to see political reporters dutifully passing along Republican complaints that President Obama’s opening offer in the fiscal cliff talks is just a recycled version of his old plan, when those same reporters spent the last year dutifully passing along Republican complaints that Obama had no plan. It’s even more amazing to see them pass along Republican outrage that Obama isn’t cutting Medicare enough, in the same matter-of-fact tone they used during the campaign to pass along Republican outrage that Obama was cutting Medicare.
This isn’t just cognitive dissonance. It’s irresponsible reporting. Mainstream media outlets don’t want to look partisan, so they ignore the BS hidden in plain sight, the hypocrisy and dishonesty that defines the modern Republican Party. I’m old enough to remember when Republicans insisted that anyone who said they wanted to cut Medicare was a demagogue, because I’m more than three weeks old...
As long as the media let an entire political party invent a new reality every day, it will keep on doing it. Every day."
It should be pointed out that supply side economics ie: tax cuts grow the economy which grows tax revenues
and starve the beast ie: we can't cut government spending (because the people won't support it) but we can use tax cuts to create deficits which will force the government to shrink
are mutually exclusive. And we have the data on both - tax cuts neither grow the economy significantly nor shrink the size of government.
But they sure do leave us unprepared to deal with the global and economic challenges our civilization has to face.
And we should all goddamn know this by now.
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 30 Nov 2012 at 05:03 PM
Oh neat. A nice little graphic showing policy choices and their expected multiplier benefits (or costs since these things are going to be on the table for cuts). Look at the top three and the bottom three:
http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/0702-stimulusbenefits.jpg
Top three- food stamps, UI, infrastructure spending, all with multipliers over a $1.50 per dollar spent.
Bottom three- bush tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, accelerated depreciation of assets. 30 pennies for the buckz.
Why are we debating what to do here? If you really really need to reduce the deficit while minimizing the costs to economic growth, there's your map.
That the people leading the debate don't want to use the map, they want to cut all three top multipliers while preserving the bottom ones, shows THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THE DEFICIT. NOR DO THEY CARE ABOUT ECONOMIC GROWTH.
They care about their own privilege, their own skin. That's it.
We will never find solutions to our problems while these people lead us. They're either stupid or monsters. We should not rely on the counsel of stupid monsters.
Amirite?
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 30 Nov 2012 at 09:10 PM
It is truly refreshing to see someone put the hacks at CNBC under a microscope. It has long been apparent that the CNBC producers are willingly turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the unbelievably unprofessional conduct of the talking heads (or they are willfully pushing "an agenda"). I keep on wondering when they plan to put Joe Kiernan on a leash? He is not only a political hack of the worst sort, - he is also a poorly socialized human being who has fallen in love with himself. As for Caruso-Cabrera, -- she is simply a set of talking breasts!
#8 Posted by Docjah, CJR on Sat 1 Dec 2012 at 10:20 AM
"On the topic of journos"
Davey Atkins posits three classes in a short post:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.ca/2012/12/faux-journalism-versus-good-journalism.html
"For instance, here's what passes for faux journalism these days:
"Democrats and Republicans divided as fiscal cliff looms."
Here's what actual journalism would look like:
"As fiscal cliff looms, Democrats offer major spending cuts; Republicans refuse tax increases on wealthy."
Here's what good journalism would look like:
"Democrats plan to cut assistance to poor during massive recession as Republicans defend record low tax rates on the wealthy at time of record income income inequality, while Congress nears self-imposed arbitrary deficit deadline."
Good luck getting them to do that, though. Good journalism is hard."
Ain't it the truth. (But hey, with modern fact checking, at least we've made progress on the actual journalism front)
#9 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 1 Dec 2012 at 10:58 AM
Why is no one challenging the constant reference to the word "entitlements"? Like the word "terrorism", the media and elected officials have herded the American public into a narrow channel of thinking about this word. Why isn't the discussion expanded to include ALL tax related entitlements, especially the rich pensions and other benefits that elected officials receive FOR LIFE? Former Senator Cranston always has that arrogant look of outrage when he calls for the need to reduce entitlement spending, yet no one ever challenges him to put his rich, tax payer funded benefits on the table. Put all current and former congressional pensions in a 401.k, then watch these officials put more effort into avoiding the Fiscal Cliff problem.
#10 Posted by Allyn Gemerek, CJR on Sat 1 Dec 2012 at 03:28 PM
Good read here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/11/30/fiscal-cliff-10-ways-obama-congress-_n_2215099.html
"There's an old axiom in the investment business that applies to the federal government, as well: You have to spend money to make money. Paradoxically, the U.S. fiscal position would likely be better off if the government simply spent more money. When the economy is booming, government spending can easily be wasteful. But when the economy is not meeting its capacity, the government needs to step in to give it a boost, according to several schools of economic thought. At a time when there are more than four job applicants for every job opening, the economy is clearly not meeting the demand for work, and the government can productively step in by spending money to hire people and get things back on track. By boosting long-term economic growth through short-term spending, the government could actually ease the deficit by ponying up money right now.
That's probably not going to happen, because most lawmakers and think-tankers in Washington are more interested in cutting various social insurance programs than in stabilizing the nation's fiscal position. [because THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THE DEFICIT, AT ALL] Nevertheless, even if the government abandons the "spend more" approach, there are at least 10 ways to cut the deficit without raising income taxes or slashing important programs for senior citizens."
And a nice article from a bit back by a democracy who has recovered a great deal:
http://www.businessinsider.com/olafur-ragnur-grimsson-iceland-2012-4
"I have already mentioned that if you want to deal with this economic crisis, you must treat it not only as an economic challenge but also as a fundamental social, political, and even a judicial challenge...
[W]e have, in our economic measures, tried to protect the lowest income sectors, we have to try and protect some of the elementary social and health services, and done more of that nature than has traditionally been done in dealing with such a crisis.
As everybody knows now, we did not pump public money into the failed banks. We treated them like private companies that went bankrupt, and we let them fail. Some people say we did it because we didn’t have any other option, there is clearly something in that argument, but it does not change the fact that it turned out to be a wise move or whatever reason. Whereas in many other countries, the prevailing orthodoxy is you pump public money into banks and you make taxpayers responsible for the banks in the long run, and somehow treat the banks as if they are holier institutions in the economy than manufacturing companies, commercial companies, IT companies, or whatever. And I have never really understood the argument: why a private bank or financial fund is somehow holier for the well being and future of the economy than the industrial sector, the IT sector, the creative sector, or the manufacturing sector.
So if you add all of this together and throw in the devaluation of the currency as well, it’s clear that what some people have called the Icelandic model includes a number of measures and approaches that have not been adopted in other countries. On the contrary, it includes some methods in the process that go directly against what has been adopted in other countries. But the outcome is the Icelandic economy is recovering faster and more effectively than any other economy, including the British and the American that suffered from a big financial crisis in 2008."
Isn't nice to have a democracy?
#11 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 2 Dec 2012 at 03:26 PM
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/what-defines-a-serious-deficit-proposal/
"So I thought I’d look at the dollars and cents — and even I am somewhat shocked. Those tax hikes would raise $1.6 trillion over the next decade; according to the CBO, raising the Medicare age would save $113 billion in federal funds over the next decade.
So, the non-serious proposal would reduce the deficit 14 times as much as the serious proposal.
I guess we have to understand the definition of serious: a proposal is only serious if it punishes the poor and the middle class."
#12 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sun 2 Dec 2012 at 04:55 PM
2 things from these clips.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46979738/ns/msnbc-up_with_chris_hayes/#50045952
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46979738/ns/msnbc-up_with_chris_hayes/#50046060
a) Chris Hayes is great TV.
B) Austerity doesn't work, and, within the parameters of the current debate, people and the national economy are going to get really hurt....
FOR NO GOOD REASON. You are attempting to balance books based on withered future investments and the sell off of public assets.
Let's pretend you've balanced the budget by selling off the highways, expanding the local unemployment rate by 4%, and depressing local wages by 10%. (And let's assume that doesn't depress revenue like it's done EVERYWHERE)
Congratulations, you're Herbert Hoover?
The parameters of this debate have GOT to change.
#13 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 3 Dec 2012 at 01:58 PM
James Galbraith brings it in a 4 part interview.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9238
GALBRAITH: [T]hose long-term CBO forecasts of very rapidly rising national debt, very rapidly rising deficits, rest on a couple of very doubtful assumptions. One is that health-care costs will continue to rise more rapidly than every other cost in the economy forever ... And the other is that the interest rate that the federal government pays on its public debt will be raised by the Federal Reserve, let's say, four years from now, to a point where it's higher than the growth rate of total output, the growth rate of income...
JAY: So, again, an artificial sense of urgency being created.
GALBRAITH: An artificial sense of urgency about events that are 30 or 40 years off. It's a very strange situation.
And we have obvious pressing problems—unemployment, foreclosures, energy, climate change. We have clear things that should be at the top of our priorities. And instead you have this preoccupation, obsessive preoccupation with computer projections which are easily—let's say, easily rebutted and which in any event, you know, are making statements about events that are highly conjectural and very far in the future."
And Iceland has shown that if we focus on the real problems, we get a real recovery. From Pt 3:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9241
"The objective of policy should be to sustain living standards for the broad American middle class, to protect people in adversity, which means sustaining Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid primarily, but also other programs that do that, and to promote the growth of economic activity, particularly on lines that solved and addressed actual problems that we have.
And the question of the deficit, of the balance between spending and revenues, is properly seen as an outcome, as the consequence of dealing with those issues, not as an objective in itself. If it takes a bigger deficit—more spending and less tax revenues—to accomplish a given set of desirable objectives, then that's exactly what we should do... [What's] Much more important is to put people back to work, to rebuild the decayed infrastructure of the country, to deal with our energy and our climate problems, to protect people's—from foreclosures, to restructure the financial system. These things are all—should be very much higher on the list. And in comparison to them, the deficit and the debt are just distractions."
Good journalism doesn't just report a bad debate, it seeks to elevate it based on knowledge and facts. Elevating the debate implies a change in its nature.
That means, journos, good journalism must change the debate. When the discussion has veered away from fact and knowledge, good journalism must reset the course of that discussion. This has got to start with you.
#14 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 3 Dec 2012 at 03:29 PM
CNBC has a campaign called RISE ABOVE. I say Rise Above DEMAGOGUERY.
The implication of CNBC's view is that raising taxes on the highest 1% who already pay 37% of the income taxes will be good for the country, and that the only reason why Republicans vote against it is because they put partisanship over country . What if the Republican politician sincerely believes that raising taxes on the wealthy will reduce jobs and economic prosperity and is harmful to the country?. see my you tube response - youtube/ janhelfeld
#15 Posted by Jan Helfeld, CJR on Tue 11 Dec 2012 at 08:14 AM