While I can work on a crossword puzzle and listen to the radio at the same time, at heart I’m a single-tasker. Thus, I have never spent much time watching CNBC with its multiple shouting heads, whirling background, flashing update screens and the constant crawler with market transactions and indices. It’s too busy to follow.
CNBC has come under fire for other reasons lately, most notably from Jon Stewart and his “Daily Show” on Comedy Central. Now, it is Stewart’s job to make us laugh, and as H.L. Mencken once observed, a guffaw is worth a thousand syllogisms.
But humor sometimes inspires thought. Of course, CNBC wanted people to buy stock, no matter what the market was doing. After all, the more people who own stocks, the more people who might feel a need to watch CNBC. Higher ratings means more revenue.
For similar reasons, I suspect, ESPN wants you to be a sports fan. HGTV wants you to buy a house, quickly become dissatisfied with it, and shop for another, then repeat as often as possible. “Animal Planet” wants you to own a pet, which makes you more likely to care about what’s on “Animal Planet,” which leads to better ratings for “Animal Planet” and improved earnings.
And so it goes, through the list of niche cable channels. You wouldn’t expect to turn on Book TV and find someone explaining how most books from celebrities are ghost-written marketing hustles that shouldn’t even pause at the remainder table before getting pulped.
So to criticize CNBC for touting the stock market is like knocking the History Channel for dwelling on the past. But why do we pay so much attention to the fluctuations of Wall Street?
In the past two months, I have read that Barack Obama’s presidency has already failed because the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell from 8,280 on Inauguration Day to 6,267 on March 6. But then again, I read that he might be a success because a short string of rising days had it up to 7,306 early yesterday.
Obama has compared daily shifts to political tracking polls that don’t tell us much. But I wish he’d say something like this:
“Fellow Americans, I see that the Dow has dropped to levels not seen since 1997. But I’d like you to think for a moment about factors that have, in the past, made the stock market rise. A big company lays off a lot of employees, and its stock goes up. A big company outsources production, and its stock goes up. A big company merges with another, eliminating thousands of jobs — the stock goes up.
“In other words, what’s good for Wall Street isn’t necessarily good for most Americans. So I wish you’d pay more attention to your own work and business, and less to the stock exchanges.”
I know that could be difficult. The previous administration promoted something called “the ownership society,” which encouraged you to pour money into these markets, where you could get fleeced, swindled and duped with devices like “collateralized debt obligations” and “credit default swaps” that nobody understood — not even the rating agencies. And now we’re stuck pouring your money, and that of your children and grandchildren and generations yet to come, into bottomless pits like AIG.
“But the alternative appears to be worse, and we have to play the cards we were dealt. Meanwhile, fellow Americans, please tend to your families, your homes and your communities. Put it an honest day’s work. If you’ll do that, and quit worrying about the Dow, I think we can get through this.”
