11 Oct Financial markets and PR
As far as the financial media goes, I am a junkie. And not the fluffy Jean Chatzky, Suze Orman stuff. I love the guys (and Becky) on SquawkBox on CNBC in the morning, especially crotchety Joe, who has gotten alot crabbier since crotchety Mark left. And my alltime superstar media hero is David Faber. If you don’t know who he is, I think he’s perhaps the smartest man on television. After my dreamboat Bob Costas of course.
But enough groupie-izing. I was watching one of the morning shows this week and lo and behold, they were talking to a trader on the floor. This trader had a positive message of course – it was friday and he expected the bottom to hit. And he planned to possibly start buying again that day. It made me feel much better until I realized it was most likely a very clever placement from some smart communications director at the Fed, or the Treasury Department. Why else would they put the guy on live TV, on a mainstream consumer show rather than one of the finance geek shows? I’m sure there were plenty of traders who felt the opposite of what this guy did.
So of course all my good feelings (of which there have been few this week where my savings are concerned) were lost. It makes me kind of wish for the good old days, when I had no clue how much planning and strategy goes into the “objective reporting” we watch and read every day.