Denninger's Trojan Horse

The silly war between the financial blogger community and CNBC’s Dennis Kneale was just decided tonight, with very little bombast I might add.  Kneale, the former magazine* editor-turned-pundit lost, and he probably doesn’t know it yet.
(* Kids reading this in college, I’ll explain what a magazine is/ was later)

Karl Denninger, who is good for at least one freaked-out meltdown per week on his highly enjoyable site Market-Ticker did something very sly and clever on Dennis Kneale’s show this evening…

As Dennis Kneale launched into his bloggers-as-anonymous-antichrists thing, Karl leaned calmly against the ropes, Ali-like, awaiting his opening.

And then Kneale gave him that opening to make the one point that all the bloggers are trying to make amidst the whole controversy:

Dennis Kneale:  Karl do you think it allows stock manipulation to happen at all, the anonymity?

Karl Denninger:  I think the stock manipulation is happening within the network reporting environment far more than it does within the blogosphere.

K.O.  End of story.

This is literally all the bloggers are trying to get across in their criticism of the financial networks, personal attacks and nastiness aside.  And Karl got on the network itself to say it.

Denninger made this point and that was it for his appearance, he was yanked off the stage as though with a vaudevillian cane hooked around his neck.  But the point was made, nonetheless.

See, there’s no need for there to be a war between finance bloggers and CNBC or any of the mainstream financial media.  If only the networks would wake up to the fact that there’s an infinite amount of intelligence coming from our community (along with the bad, admittedly), we could work together to give the viewing/ reading public a more balanced, well-reasoned discourse than what’s currently available.

Packing the airwaves with sell-side analysts and mutual fund managers who only know how to talk their mostly long-only books is so 90’s.

And I’m sure that Dennis Kneale is a nice guy off-set and means well, but giving him a nightly forum to trash the most important up-and-coming voices in financial journalism is the dumbest thing I can think of.  Who’s allowing/ encouraging this needless battle?

Embrace the bloggers, CNBC, and bring in some opinions from outside the mutual fund/ asset gathering complex.  It is your destiny.

Below is the segment in question from CNBC:

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2946553&w=425&h=350&fv=]