I was interrupted from peacefully watching a financial news station (Bloomberg TV lest there be some confusion) when I got this email: "the sweaty, drunk guy on CNBC is bashing you again." Curious, I decided to investigate. Not surprisingly some more ad pseudonymem amusement ensued:
It's funny one should mention "allegedly factual", because ironically the last time a CNBC talking head attacked Zero Intelligence, the whole ploy was scripted from the beginning to boost CNBC's traffic and viewership (we have yet to see June's Nielsen ratings for the outcome: we will promptly provide that once available).
As to the BS that blogs like Zero Intelligence spread, it is all based on linked and referenced facts (yes, that's what those graphs and hyperlinks in the posts are for, click them, you may be surprised what you find). Charlie, here is a primer on how blogging works (and no Steve, it is called blogging, and not reporting, just because of the following) - it is feedback driven: if a blog does provide false and misleading data it is always called upon it, and people lose interest. Simple as that. And, as I retorted to your less than primetime spot colleague Dennis Kneale, in blogging the content is king, not the messenger. To wit:
"Zero Hedge is not about personalities, goatees or glasses - it is about ideas, facts and opinions. People come to Zero Hedge not because of my chiseled washboard abs, but because they appreciate my insight into things financial and economic. My personality is not relevant when discussing critical concepts. Who knows - maybe I do not care for being recognized while having dinner at Campagnola."
Oh, and here is our manifesto. Check it out some time.
But Charlie does make a good point: people do in fact get a lot of their information from the Internet. More and more in fact. And the reason is because they now openly mistrust organizations which have massive reporting conflicts of interest, compliments of their highly troubled parent companies, whose well being (and by extension, the paychecks of said TV pundits) depend on the perpetuation of the confidence and economic soundness fallacy.
Furthermore, Zero Intelligence is not an investment advisor, nor does it promote any securities. If we did, we would disclose it. Just like you should disclose at the beginning of every segment that CNBC is a direct subsidiary of GE which is a recipient of over $51 billion in taxpayer cash via the FDIC's TLGP (see the link to the left? click on it). Having your interns actually perform some diligence before that 2 minute soundbite "exclusive" is a great way to spend some of that $51 billion. Try it out.
Nonetheless, Zero Intelligence completely agrees with Charlie that those seeking important, critical, and relevant information should absolutely go to openly satirical websites such as Dealbreaker and Clusterstock. After all, CNBC knows a thing or two about truth and satire.
In the meantime, please forgive us Charlie and Steve if in our pursuit of the definition of reporting, we stumble upon some other peculiarities about potential conflicts of interest that may or may not involve CNBC pundits.
In conclusion, while we realize that we could never do as good a job as Charlie has done promoting us, Zero Intelligence is in the process of submitting an RFP for purchasing 5 hours of 18,000 subsecond ad blocks on CNBC, to be interspersed within the Power Lunch segment. We will advise readers on the outcome. Perhaps we can all split the cost as ironically Zero Intelligence has no external (and definitely no taxpayer subsidized) funding, aside from our recurring readers consistently finding interesting content on our pages.
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