The Return of the Pump and Dump Channel
May 4, 2007Party time–Dow 13,000!
At the end of the last century, when someone referred to a particular company or, more likely, a certain stock, I’d say “I saw it on the pump and dump channel.” I was referring to 24-hour business channels like CNBC and the late, unlamented CNNFN with tons of time to let company spokespeople and analysts with screaming conflicts of interests plug their picks. Of course, there were plenty of business journalists with conflicts too.
In the 50’s, “Newspapers would put their drunks and burned-out cases on the business page, says former Forbes writer Jim Michaels. Now it’s about which “money honey” is the hottest.
Then there’s the Jim Cramer vs. Lou Dobbs battle of the Harvard madmen. Cramer’s pounding the table on stocks he likes is bad enough, but Lou Dobbs seems to want out of the business ghetto, he’s found a media conspiracy and his CNN enablers seem content to let him say say any kind of shit.
With what passes for financial journalism, what’s depressing is that we’ve been here before, with most of the same characters. It’s easy to be a genius in a rising market. Let’s see what happens if the house of cards falls—again.