Strange happenings today on CNBC

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Did anyone else notice a couple of weird events on Squawk Box and an afternoon CNBC program today?

About 8:00 a.m. EST, Kathleen Hayes was interviewing some analyst from Kemper Funds, tossing him a softball question. She was inviting him to concur that the stock market has already priced in a 25 basis point increase at the Fed's February meeting.

This poor analyst apparently made the mistake of transparent honesty. He replied that actually, the bond market is anticipating a 50 basis point increase. Kathleen loudly interrupted him and said, "no, it's really only 25 points." And he innocently continued, "no, it's very close to 50 points in the bond market."

At this point, Kathleen was halfway standing up, very agitated. Both were talking over each other. The camera swung to Mark Whats-His-Name's face which was whiplashing left to right looking at each of them in astonishment.

Thereupon, the program immediately cut to a commercial without ANY FURTHER COMMENT. I thought, "oh, this is going to be interesting. Let's see what happens when they return from commercial!"

Back from commercial, a new infobabe was seated in Kathleen's chair and read the business news without the slightest explanation of what happened. Kathleen was gone. Mark then turned to the Kemper analyst and began a discussion on a completely different topic. No one ever mentioned a word about the incident prior to the commercial. A while later, Kathleen returned and participated more in the program. I am sick today so I didn't watch much more at that point.

Did anyone else see this? Am I imagining things?

This afternoon, while tuning in for a few minutes, while the NASDAQ was plummeting (maybe 3:30 p.m. EST), CNBC showed two men standing in the pit at the NYSE conversing about FOOTBALL! One man was Paul Tagliabue and the other was some other important football guy (sorry, I don't follow football). And they really were talking about football, with anemic questions tossed to them from the anchor at the desk. Meanwhile, the NASDAQ numbers were sinking, sinking, sinking with nary a comment.

I rubbed my eyes and decided I was hallucinating and time to get some more sleep.

Remember, I am the naive dumb housewife. Please humor me if I have erred a bit in the technical names and details.

Questions: 1. In the last five minutes of the SuperBowl, will a couple of NYSE biggies be interviewed on the field discussing hot stock picks while the last few plays of the game are executed? 2. Where will CNBC stop in its heroic efforts to ignore and downplay the obvious while it distracts shallow-minded Americans with nonsense?

-- J Wheel (motherof5@wellprepared.noregrets), January 06, 2000

Answers

What's good for the stock market is good for CNBC.

I doubt that it's any more complicated than that.

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), January 06, 2000.


J Wheel, Your post is not only so true but very funny!!! As I read your post I was reminded of the many hundreds of times that I have watched that very show and experienced similar situations on that damn show. You have to remember that CNBC shoots many shows on the floor of the NYSE after hours. Like the guy above said....what is good for the NYSE is good for CNBC.....don't worry about it all. They are the ones hallucinating.....not us. Wait and see.

-- el snipor (faraway@distantland.net), January 06, 2000.

JWheel, maybe Kathleen is PMSing. I'm a housewife, too, and the other morning Mark Haynes mentioned a "dead cat bounce" to Kathleen, who began speaking about her cats, and then the sound technicians started playing sounds of cats meowing and "squish" sounds of cats hitting the pavement. This was their Tuesday morning attempt to say the Dow would bounce after Monday's down day (but Tuesday it tanked 368 anyway.) Also today I heard them discussing whether Joe's hair was a toupe. And Tyler Matheson mentioned that his cats Mitzy and Princess eat IAMS cat food. And last week Walter Cronkrite saying all Americans should own stocks. Please. Spare me, GE, you don't bring good things to life(remember PCBs?) anymore than Dow (the chemical company) thinks good things(remember napalm?). What's good for THE CORPORATION is good for CNBC.

-- d (dd@sover.net), January 06, 2000.

I saw this fellow Joe? Pisani? on the show asking people to please put cash back in the banks so they could loan it out. I swear. Totally shocked me. Don't usually watch it so I can't be sure of the spelling on his name. Won't watch again. Too spooky.

-- pliney the younger (pliney@pompei.com), January 06, 2000.

I heard the comment from the guy from Kemper. It was a stupid comments since bonds do not have Fed interest rate increases priced in. One must look at the short term instruments such as fed funds futures or t-bill futures to see what anticipated rate increase is priced in. I don't have much respect for CNBC and regard it as an infomercial for the brokerage/investment industry.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000.


On days like today (and tomorrow as well, I suspect), I find CNBC is great theatre. There's more transparency on that show than almost anywhere else on "news TV". Not honesty, necessarily, but you do see people under a bit of pressure and it's fascinating to watch them handle it in their own ways. So much more interesting than boring network talking heads reading teleprompters...

Consider that CNBC has not gone through a serious bear market. One wonders what the effect will be on ratings. Will folks continue to tune in to get breaking news (as they did with CNN during the Gulf war), or will a prolonged drop drive down ratings as a percentage of amateurs/viewers exits the market in dismay?

I missed Ms. Hayes' exchange with the fellow from Kemper this AM. She has seemed to be a bit out of sorts lately. A frustrating situation at present, what with the hot debate about the 25 vs. 50 basis points "bump", and money sloshing around like pool water during a quake. Not a pretty sight...

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), January 07, 2000.


That Joe comment to put money back into the banks please was IMHO tongue planted firmly in cheek. He has always had a dry wit and frequently throw's in some gem while reporting what ever is going on. I have been watching many years off and on and you can tell when the market looks bad they all put on their "serious faces." We don't even have to mention Maria.

Kathleen has always been a bit spastic and being newer and less a babe has a harder time getting face time. I believe Kathleen has a few bond "experts" that she gets most of her numbers and predictions from.

-- Squid (ItsDark@down.here), January 07, 2000.


I wish I could have seen this!

I guess this must indicate that the average "investor" these days is incapable of looking at the 30 year bond yield in his paper or quote.yahoo.com and working it out for himself. And has forgotten how to tell when a politician is lying.

Methinks more evidence of bubble trouble.

-- Nigel (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), January 07, 2000.


>CNBC in a bear market

This may be _the_ soap opera to watch. Maybe they will all start crying on the air!

Buy stock in kleenex companies now!

;-)

-- cgbg jr (cgbgjr@webtv.net), January 07, 2000.


I wonder if they'll pull out their Patton helmets again today?

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), January 07, 2000.


Kathleen Hayes just ripped Larry Kudlow a new ass. They went right to a commercial. She's the only one with the guts to challenge the Wall Street gurus.

I agree that CNBC is an infomercial for the stock market.

-- (I'm@pol.ly), January 07, 2000.


[This is a funny thread.... thanks.. keep going......]

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), January 07, 2000.

Ok Lisa,

Mark Haines is a fat ass!! :)

-- (I'm@pol.ly), January 07, 2000.


Squid,

Maybe not so tongue in cheek:

http://www.nypost.com/business/21380.htm

There is another thread about this article (I don't have the URL handy right now, but I think it's entitled "How the y2k bug bit greenspan and wall st....).

Of course, I really don't know much about finance or the stock market or... Just interesting to read this after having read this thread.

-- winter wondering (winterwondring@yahoo.com), January 07, 2000.


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