Stein claimed that Merrill Lynch was an astonishingly well run company, Laffer and other chimed in, many times rudely, proclaiming great profits in the making.  I feel like I just visited a mental institution where the residents, extremely well paid, were in charge of things.

My God, how fracked up is Fox news?  It's almost like planned absurdity.  And people watch this shit? And, base their investment decisions on this nonsense? They will pay with their pocketbooks.

What these pundits (sic) can do best of all is outshout others with a different opinion that their own.  After this debacle of a performance, most normal people would slink away, shamed to the core.  But, these idiots just prattle on.  Anyone who listens to their financial guidance deserves what he gets, monetary destruction.

Neglect and traumatization of baby animals leads to functional and structural deficiencies in their brains. Ditto for human babies. Alice Miller

These wackos are on there because they have become recognizagble faces and because they know how to deliver the on-air performance that the producers want. They are not on there to give analysis that "performs" well statistically.

This is true in finance as well as with the war and politics at large, and is true on all of the major news programs. There are different styles of presentation expected on different channels. This is what is important to the decision makers, because this is how they establish their brand. All day long, that's all that matters on TV.

The more control, the more that requires control. This is the road to chaos. -Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment

Yes.  Peter Schiff was right and Art Laffer and Ben Stein are idiots.  Fox is terrible.  And CNBC is not much better.  That clip says it all.

And Ben Stein is still giving bad advice on Yahoo Finance.  I pop in to give him 1 star from time to time.  

And Art Laffer's head has exploded.  I saw him on Bill Maher recently and he was a bumbling mess and it was apparent his world has been turned upside down.  He's been used to being treated as a genius by the Republican supply siders and now he doesn't know what to do.  He was backtracking like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

The only thing I don't know about Peter Schiff's predictions is if we really will have hyper-inflation.  He's been very consistent about this--since the early 2000s--that's why he's been recommending gold for years and he now suggests buying value stocks.  

Anyone who actually takes financial advice from Fox really is a tool.  I suspect that most of their viewers aren't well-heeled investment types.

Fear will keep the local systems in line. -Grand Moff Tarkin -SLB-

Under BushCo especially, governance = the manufacture of reality & Faux News has been absolutely crucial.

Can't have Crisis Capitalism without the crisis, after all. An essential ingredient for a true crisis is a widespread belief that it's not happening, with appropriately guided behavior assuring that it will.

Absolutely nothing we see via MSM is accidental. The marginalization of an alternate reality to the one manufactured seems to be the point.

    Washington Mutual ! Come on , this video's a Michael Moore production, right ? Peter Schiff's the only real conservative in the bunch . Fantasy's a weird drug to OD on - very bad for all concerned, and the country as a whole has ODed on it, phew.

   Wow Steven great job. I'm blown away by  the calm assurance of Peter Schiff. In the face of ridicule he calmly explains the coming credit crunch. Now we see the amazing accuracy of his predictions.

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; now we know that it is bad economics;" - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Schiff was impressive and it's fun to see the 'usual suspects' make fools of themselves. In fact, I was so impressed, I went to Schiff's web site. What might give progressives pause is what Schiff has to say about the current crisis:
"The government should let the Big Three fail not because we no longer need an auto industry, but because we desperately do. [...] By allowing the Big Three to fail, their capacity will be turned over to new owners who will be able to acquire the means of production at fire sale prices and hire workers at globally competitive wages."
"the massive stimuli that will likely be pushed through by Obama and an overly eager Democratic Congress will further impede any real recovery."
". We must repair our national balance sheet and a painful recession is the only path to achieve this."

You might want to think twice before heaping too much praise on Schiff...