Hartford, Conn. – Louis Rukeyser, a best-selling author, columnist, lecturer and television host who delivered pun- filled, common-sense commentary on complicated business and economic news, died Tuesday. He was 73.
Rukeyser died at his home in Greenwich, Conn., after a long battle with multiple myeloma, a rare bone-marrow cancer, said his brother, Bud Rukeyser.
As host of “Wall $treet Week With Louis Rukeyser” on public TV from 1970 until 2002, Rukeyser took a wry approach to the ups and downs in the marketplace and urged guests to avoid jargon.
He brought finance and economics to ordinary viewers and investors, and was rewarded with the largest audience in the history of financial journalism.
“He brings to the tube a blend of warmth, wit, irreverence, thrusting intellect and large doses of charm, plus the credibility of a Walter Cronkite,” Money magazine wrote in a cover story.
Rukeyser also won numerous awards and honors, including a citation by People magazine as the only sex symbol of the “dismal science” of economics.
“Our prime mission is to make previously baffling economic information understandable and interesting to people in general,” he told The Associated Press.
Bud Rukeyser called his brother “a giant at what he did.”
“He was a pioneer in economic reporting in television. Right up to the time he got ill, he was at the top of the heap,” he said.
Rukeyser quit “Wall $treet Week” and moved to CNBC in March 2002 rather than go along with executives’ plan to demote him and use younger hosts to update the format.
Rukeyser’s last CNBC show was Oct. 31, 2003.
