CNBC anchors were left dumbfounded and acted overtly cantankerous yesterday after Congressman Ron Paul's opening statement at the House Financial Services Committee was broadcast live to an audience of millions.
CNBC went live to the House, clearly without knowing that the Texas Congressman had the initial Republican statement at the hearing of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
After the Congressman spent two and a half minutes lecturing Bernanke on sound money principles, warning that the financial crisis cannot be solved by merely creating credit out of thin air, CNBC cut back to the studio.
Anchors Erin Burnett and Mark Haines were so perturbed by what they had just heard that they immediately cut to a commercial break:
Haines: "This is not going as planned"
Burnett: "No it is not"
Haines: "We were told that there would be a very limited number of opening statements, and it seems to be getting out of control."
Burnett: "Here's what we forgot, everybody is taking this live, you know what that means? Why would they miss an opportunity for free air time?"
Haines: "We're going to take a commercial break and get them out of the way, so that when something really substandard [he must mean substantial?] is happening, we don't have to interrupt them."
The Congressman's speech was powerful and eye opening:
“This is the end of an era,” said Paul, “we can’t reinflate the bubble….if we think that we can reinflate this bubble by artificially creating credit out of thin air and calling it capital, believe me we don’t have a prayer of solving these problems - we have a total misunderstanding of what credit is versus capital.”
Of course, in the eyes of the corporate media shills for the Fed, the Treasury, and Wall Street Paul's words were "out of control". How dare he speak such sense and actively question the logic of the almighty ones, our only hope, our saviors (who also happen to be the very same set of criminals that led us down the path to economic ruin in the first instance).
Then again, how could we expect anything else from the likes of CNBC's Burnett and Haines, who have previously demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the underlying causes of the financial crisis, even commenting that gold has "no inherent value".
