Read + Write + Report
Home | Start a blog | About Orble | FAQ | Sites | Writers | Advertise | My Orble | Login

Foolish Fisher

May 17th 2009 06:23
In 2007 a Californian funds management company named Fisher Investments posted the following to its blog: "99% of news is produced by for-profit enterprises. This means the press has an incentive to sell more media and compete with others trying to do the same. The easiest way to consistently sell media is to make people believe they need to consume the content offered. They only way to do that is to make the content seem important — urgently important. The only way to make things seem urgent is through fear. Thus, the media has an incentive to be dour, to make us worry and create angst. It sells papers."

Not only is this garbage, but Fisher tried justifying it by pointing to this heading on a 2007 media report, "Corporate Debt Risk Jumps on Concern over Bear Stearns Funds", and claiming this was evidence of media bias.

"The media is very quick to intone that Bear Stearns’ Hedge Fund woes could be 'just the tip of the iceberg' and the cause of increasing credit risk. But common sense shows that’s highly unlikely," says Fisher.

Boy, did they get that wrong! I've written a fuller report on Fisher's foolishness at the Cutting Through blog.



55
Vote
   


2008: a blood red year

January 2nd 2009 06:08
AD2008 will be remembered as the year Earth bled on a bed of greed. AD2009 promises to be the year of pain; the year we run out of sutures, bandages and paracetamol.

It is not certain things will get worse before they get better, but if they don't it will be a surprise. The whole world is now floundering in recession. Oh, Australia and other pockets are technically still wagging the tail of fiscal growth, but the cheering has died and even the politicians know there is no further mileage to be squeezed from that pointless fact.

Australia may be one of the last to qualify for properly defined recession, but that is splitting hairs, or percentage points, and who will care when recessionary bullets are flying thickly in 2009, and the blood in the gutters is as plentiful as elsewhere?

Interest rates are coming down - nice, if you have a job - but unemployment will rise, and there will be the greatest pain.

Meanwhile, the search goes on for signs of contrition in Wall Street. Conspicuous by their absence are apologies, self-flagellation and promises to spend more time outside the ivory towers in future.

It is an attitude which led Matthew Parris to write the following this week in London's The Times. I leave you in his good hands.

"I want to see hedge-fund managers tipped into cage fights with naked Gypsies; bank managers wrestle with lions in the O2 arena; failed regulators thrown to alligators in the Royal Docks; short sellers in pits of snakes; and distinguished City economists try their luck with sharks. They've had their heyday, their bonuses, their Porsches, their fine wines and oafish ostentation - they've had their fun. Now for ours. To the guillotine!"

timesonline.co.uk



31
Vote
   


Chris Champion's Blogs

6392 Vote(s)
625 Comment(s)
79 Post(s)
2528 Vote(s)
146 Comment(s)
41 Post(s)
2173 Vote(s)
151 Comment(s)
29 Post(s)
11106 Vote(s)
717 Comment(s)
179 Post(s)
6728 Vote(s)
653 Comment(s)
117 Post(s)
Moderated by Chris Champion
Copyright © 2006 2007 2008 On Topic Media PTY LTD. All Rights Reserved. Design by Vimu.com.
On Topic Media ZPages: Sydney |  Melbourne |  Brisbane |  London |  Birmingham |  Leeds     [ Advertise ] [ Contact Us ] [ Privacy Policy ]