Charles Gasparino, the CNBC reporter, published an op-ed in The New York Post yesterday.
Here’s the interesting bit:
Earlier this year, high-flying hedge
fund Paulson & Co. retained [former Federal Reserve chief Alan
Greenspan] for its “advisory board.” The firm is a
noted “short seller” of banks and financial stocks -
meaning it makes money when these companies’ shares fall.
The thing is, Greenspan is making
public comments that inevitably influence public policy and the
markets - and some of those comments may well have led to his
clients making a nice profit.
In a recent speech to the Economic
Club of New York, Greenspan said the recession would likely
“be the longest and deepest” since the Great Depression
and that Congress might have to allocate more money to save the
beleaguered banking system on top of the billions already gone for
the Troubled Asset Recovery Program.
Then he told the Financial Times:
“It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in
order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring” of
their troubled balance sheets.
Such a move would wipe out
stockholders, sending shares of banks even lower - thus likely
benefiting Paulson. It would also protect bondholders, helping
another Greenspan client, the large bond-firm Pimco.
The question is: Why didn’t Gasparino, or anybody else,
say this on CNBC?
Hedge fund manager Paul Kedrosky appeared on the network to
criticize Greenspan’s relationship with Pimco, but there was
no mention of the former Fed chairman spewing negativity for
Paulson’s short selling operation.
More importantly, no proper journalist at CNBC has reported that
short sellers use many other tactics (such as planting false
stories on CNBC and manufacturing phantom stock) to demolish public
companies and crush the markets.
At our nation’s leading business network, only Jim Cramer
reports on this scandal. Only Jim Cramer tells America about one of
the most important causes of the worst financial crisis since the
1930s.
He does so with funny sound effects while prancing around the
Romper Room set of a program that is called “Mad
Money.”
These days are surreal, to say the least.