CNBC Devotes Hour To "Future Of Capitalism" (VIDEO)
Last night, CNBC apparently had a "Meeting Of The Minds," that was apparently very important to watch. It was about the future of Capitalism! It was in a special, dark room! The network ran a countdown ticker on their lower third, directing people to the fact that this "Meeting Of The Minds" was urgent enough that you needed to know how long you had before it started.
And then it started! An hour of what sounded like a bunch of people struggling to graduate through the Kubler-Ross model of grieving without cycling back to denial every five minutes. There was few interesting moments where BlackRock CEO Larry Fink started protesting about what a roomful of cock-ups they all were, inspiring the rest of the assembly to yammer incredulously at him. But that was about it.
The entire Meeting Of The Minds looked like it was staged on the set of a community theatre production of No Exit. Fitting, since the whole exchange was just so damned Sartrean that it might as well have ended with the line, "Well, well, let's get on with it" as the lights fade on a Satanic valet updating his Wall Street snark blog.
Anyway, here are your highlights from this Meeting Of The Mehs:
AQR co-founder Clifford Asness is ready to mount his gold-plated Waaahmbulance all the way to Capitol Hill to get someone to give him a "mea culpa" on how Fannie and Freddie were "not OK." Seeing as how AQR continues to crumble down to its foundations, maybe he's just looking for a few pointers!
Here's PIMCO CEO Mohamed El Erian saying, "The most important thing for capitalism is trust ... the government has to trust that the private sector will behave according to a certain rule of laws, ethics and morality. And the private sector has to trust that the rule of law, property rights, contracts and the capital structure." And I'd advise all of you to put your trust in the fact that both the government and Wall Street will continue to behave like raving, amoral werepigs, forever and ever.
Vikram "Rhymes With Bandit" Pandit wants you to know that he knows that you know about pain, but do you know he knows what pain feels like, too? Yes, his voice betrays no suffering and his skin looks as shiny as if it's been massaged by the backside of newborns, but NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR RETRIBUTION, PEOPLE! Anyway, if things don't break Pandit's way over the next few weeks, the next time he has a meeting with the minds, he might be toting his resume along with him.
Then Jack Welch pipes up about how he's crazy old and has seen it all before and blah blah the spirit of RESILIENCE, it lives! And then he muses about how back in the 1980's, New York City was a den of fear and loathing and the Japanese owned Rockefeller Center and everyone was obliterated on cocaine and somehow -- SOMEHOW -- the Earth didn't collide with the sun, as one might have expected from the idiots who ran the world back then. "We're not done! We'll come back!" How will the screw up the world in twenty years? That's for the FUTURE OF CAPITALISM TO DECIDE.
Finally, here's Fink, straight up suggesting that there's a lot of blame to go around and that "capitalism went too far" and how "everybody here was guilty," and then everyone starts shouting, you know, like minds are wont to do.
So there you have it. Hell really is other people, specifically these people, who have painstakingly woven a handbasket for us to ride along inside, and that's the future of capitalism, I guess.
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First Posted: 05-19-09 04:43 PM | Updated: 05-19-09 10:17 PM