CNBC

CNBC's Suze Orman bills herself as an "internationally acclaimed personal financial expert."

This "financial expert," appearing on HBO's Real Time Friday, said that in 2012, "We are average [sic] 200,000 jobs a month that are being created...[Obama's] done so much in the past four years I can’t even tell you" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

At the very least the timing of ABC News's interview with Gingrich ex-wife Marianne Gingrich is suspect. At the very worst, it is completely inappropriate if it failed to be newsworthy and respectful, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told CNBC's Larry Kudlow on his January 19 Kudlow Report.

"In some respects, aren't they obliged to get it out as fast as they can," Kudlow countered, adding that maybe by putting it out the night of the debate, "it actually lessens the impact and significance of the interview." [see video embedded below page break; see related Bozell statement here]

UPDATE: James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute's blog has more, including the possibility that the original story misidentified "Bain Consulting," as well as a theory as to the story's original source.

It looks like someone ran with something they thought was too good to check.

A retraction described as a "Correction" currently on CNBC's web site tells readers: "A previous story incorrectly reported that Mitt Romney's former firm, Bain & Co., was part of a team of consulting companies that advised President Barack Obama on a decision to shutter car dealerships during the auto bailout. Bain & Co. said it has no connection to the "Bain Consulting" firm referenced in government documents." Several bloggers excerpted the original report, including Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. Some of what he captured follows:

After the news portion of a "Warmer Weather Hurting Retail" segment on the impact of the mild winter on retail sales thus far appearing early this morning on CNBC, Joe Kernen and John Harwood got into it over the relevance and influence of so-called "global warming" (I guess Harwood didn't get the memo that it's "climate change" now).

Picking up at the 2:10 mark of the video:

John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC, co-hosted the GOP debate in Michigan last Wednesday, and had a hand in Perry’s infamous debate “oops” moment, when the Texas governor was unable to list all three of the federal agencies he planned to eliminate as president. On Monday Harwood revealed that a CNBC producer helped prod Perry’s long, awkward moment by shouting a directive into Harwood’s earpiece.

Harwood also writes a weekly “Caucus” column for the New York Times. On Monday he discussed his role in Gov. Rick Perry’s infamous debate "oops," as well as how the audience booed the hosts for bringing up Herman Cain's sexual harassment controversy.

During Wednesday night's presidential debate, Newt Gingrich could barely restrain his amusement as co-moderator Maria Bartiromo defended the liberal media's reporting of the economy.    

Bartiromo took umbrage after Gingrich's asserted, "What is amazing to me is the inability of much of our academic world and much of our news media and most of the people on Occupy Wall Street to have a clue about history." The CNBC journalist responded by huffing, "I'm sorry, but what is the media reporting inaccurately about the economy?" An incredulous Gingrich mocked, "I love humor disguised as a question. That's terrific." [ See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Before being tapped to be one of the moderators at CNBC's upcoming Republican presidential debate, John Harwood was ranting against the GOP for causing the summer debt crisis. Appearing on NBC's Today in July, Harwood warned: "...the House Republican caucus...would not accept what President Obama needed to make a deal...It's crazy politics, what they're doing..."

When the U.S. later lost its AAA credit rating in August, Harwood again appeared on Today to proclaim that the downgrade had provided President Obama with "a tangible consequence to point to for Republican brinksmanship on the debt and deficit reduction deal.”    

Nation magazine writer Ari Berman carped on today's Martin Bashir program on MSNBC that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) wants to take America back into "a new Gilded Age,"  an "era of the robber barons where the top one percent" would control the nation's wealth.

Immediately after that segment, Bashir turned to CNBC's Brian Sullivan for the day's "CNBC Market Wrap," a look looking at how the nation's stock exchanges performed today.

After discussing the "boring" but positive day on Wall Street, Sullivan added in closing that he would like to come on Bashir's program to debate Berman some time (MP3 audio here; video embedded below):

Update (10:00 EDT, Oct. 20): CNBC has an update/correction on the story:

<<Update: On Wednesday evening, a Department of Energy spokesman said that the press releases had been returned to their original content as a result of CNBC's inquiry about the changes.

Correction: A previous headline on this article incorrectly characterized the press releases as being related to Solyndra.>>

Is the Obama administration literally rewriting history when it comes to the Solyndra scandal Energy Department's solar energy loan programs?

"Someone affiliated with the Department of Energy has been going back to make changes to press releases posted on the Internet weeks and months ago," Eamon Javers of CNBC reported this afternoon.

President Obama once again showed a thin skin on Thursday by accusing Fox News's Ed Henry of being Mitt Romney's spokesperson.

CNBC's John Harwood asked White House Chief of Staff William Daley about this the following day, and Daley responded, "There are certain people in the media who do seem at times to carry the water for certain piece of the political spectrum" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In a report filed at the Los Angeles Times's Politics Now blog earlier today, Washington Bureau reporter James Oliphant relayed a number of whoppers delivered by Vice President Joe Biden without anything resembling a challenge. In Part 1, I noted how Biden, who in August described Tea Party sympathizers as "terrorists" and in September as "barbarians," today spoke in complimentary terms of how much the Occupy Wall Street crowd has in common with them. In Part 2, I dealt with the Veep's hit at financially struggling Bank of America for having the nerve to try to recover some of what the Dodd-Frank "financial reform" legislation took away by charging some customers a $5 monthly fee for debit-card use.

This final part will deal with Biden's rendition of how the "bank bailout" portion of TARP operated, which is quite different from the reality. The relevant excerpt from Oliphant, which necessarily overlaps the first two parts, follows (bolds are mine throughout):

CNN's newest addition to its prime-time line-up, former CNBC anchor Erin Burnett, told Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz on Sunday that yes, she would be "more opinionated" at CNN than in the past. Burnett's show, "Out Front," airs for the first time on Monday Oct 3 at 7 p.m. EDT.

Kurtz interviewed Burnett at the bottom of the 11 a.m. hour on Sunday. He asked her "Are you going to be more opinionated, Erin Burnett, then you have been in your previous role as business correspondent?" She answered in the affirmative.

[Video below the break.]

Jim Cramer, a Democrat and Wall Street insider, made a statement on CNBC's "Squawk Box" Friday morning that most definitely turned heads in the White House.

Speaking about the disappointing data released by the Conference Board, Cramer said that traders hate President Obama "like Jimmy Carter was hated" because they believe he's "destroying this country" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

During 2009 and 2010, liberal commentators and even politicians made a point of bashing conservative commentators such as Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham for allowing gold companies to advertise on their shows, arguing that conservatives and gold companies cynically colluded to deceive viewers into buying bad investments. The recent spike in gold prices seems to prove that the conservative commentators were right after all.

Gold prices topped $1,900 an ounce on August 22. The price of gold rose over 400 dollars since the beginning of this year, up from $1,421.40 per ounce since January 1st, 2011, and has rapidly risen over the past two months. The price of gold was $854.60 per ounce at the start of the Obama administration. In other words, gold prices have more than doubled since the beginning of the Obama administration.

The question of whether or not Social Security is a Ponzi scheme moved from Wednesday's Republican presidential debate to the set of CNBC Thursday.

In a heated debate, CNBC's Rick Santelli and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman argued the issue with them ending up calling each other "idiotic" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Ahead of the Sept. 2 release of the August jobs report, surveys had indicated the economy had added anywhere from 75,000 to 100,000 jobs that month. But those estimates turned out to be very wrong. Just minutes ahead of the release, CNBC’s Rick Santelli went out on a limb predicting that no jobs had been added in August.

Santelli was right about that number. As CNBC reported just minutes later, not a single job was added overall to the payroll numbers and the unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent. The previous two months were revised downward to show an additional 58,000 jobs lost.

If we're to believe Associated Press reporter Daniel Wagner, this morning's report from the Department of Labor on unemployment claims revealing that initial claims during the week ended August 6 fell to 395,000, was "good news." Why, according to Wagner, that drop, all by itself, it was "enough to catapult stocks," pushing the Dow up by 423 points in Thursday's trading.

Uh, not exactly, Daniel. First, though the decline in initial claims was in the right direction, it was only 5,000, or 1.25%, less than last week's original number of 400,000 (naturally revised up to 402,000 this week), and an even tinier 3,000 fewer than the initial number two weeks ago. If (more like when, given the track record of previous weeks) it's revised up by 3,000 or so, it will be even less impressive. Huge advances in the Dow do not arise from such tiny improvements.

Banking analyst Meredith Whitney made a big mistake on CNBC Wednesday calling Tea Party members "freaked out white men who are unemployed" when Rick Santelli was about to come on the program.

Not surprisingly, Santelli after his pre-market interview with Steve Liesman went right after Whitney's foolish comments even making it personal (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Thomas Roberts implied Tuesday that members of Congress who oppose efforts to inject more government spending into the economy, as President Barack Obama proposed recently, are committing an "act of treason."

"Why don't people look at that as an act of treason?" the daytime anchor asked the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, who shrugged off the accusation.

"I don't think what happens is Mitch McConnell and John Boehner retire to their volcano lair and plot how to doom the American economy," replied the liberal blogger.

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

For over 24 hours, Obama advisers, Democrat senators, and terminally stupid ideologues in the media have been blaming Standard and Poor's downgrade of America's debt on the Tea Party.

On Monday, one of the only sane voices in the mainstream media stood up and said, "If it wasn't for the Tea Party, they would have passed the debt ceiling thumbs up, we would have been rated BBB" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

At the top of Saturday's NBC Today, CNBC's chief Washington correspondent John Harwood told co-host Lester Holt that the downgrade of U.S. debt provided President Obama with "a tangible consequence to point to for Republican brinksmanship on the debt and deficit reduction deal."

Harwood observed: "Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, always said, 'We don't want co-ownership of the economy,'" and predicted, "You can expect the administration to say, 'You've got it now.'"

On Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry touted President Obama trying to scare the American people into supporting his debt ceiling plan: "He called for public activism, so much so that we hear that Capitol Hill web sites were crashing last night because so many people were trying to e-mail their representatives. It looks like he spooked main street...will he also spook Wall Street?"

Curry directed that question to CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer, who promptly rejected such doom and gloom: "No, not at all. Frankly, Wall Street's very calm. The markets are looking pretty good today....No one's buying the panic, no one's buying the skyrocketing interest rates economic crisis scenario."

Appearing on Saturday's NBC Today, CNBC's John Harwood solely blamed House Republicans for the ongoing debt ceiling gridlock: "Speaker Boehner and President Obama, were negotiating in good faith. They wanted a deal....the House Republican caucus...would not accept what President Obama needed to make a deal, and that is real and significant tax hikes as a component."  

Harwood argued conservative House members were intimidating Boehner and declared: "That's why Boehner left the talks. That's why the United States' risk of default, while still low in my opinion, is higher than it was 24 hours ago." Later, Harwood touted how "Independents are starting to side with Democrats" and proclaimed: "House Republicans are not playing politics on this. It's crazy politics, what they're doing, and Republican leaders think it may hurt the party. But it's what they believe, and that's why we're at this point."

CNBC panelists and guests always make predictions in the minutes leading up to the Labor Department's release of the jobs report and June 3 was no exception.

While economists Diane Swonk and Mark Zandi and CNBC's own Steve Liesman all made predictions of job gains between 100,000 and 150,000 - Rick Santelli threw his own lower prediction in just seconds before the announcement: 55,000. (Video available here)

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday got a much-needed economics lesson from CNBC's Joe Kernen.

In the midst of a discussion about the economy and how it's going to impact the 2012 elections, the "Hardball" host bragged about having studied economics in grad school leading Kernen to marvelously ask, "You studied economics?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Perhaps using a preemptive strike to help combat the May jobs report to be released on Friday, MSNBC has already found an excuse for lost jobs, and an increased unemployment rate – storms, tornadoes and flooding.  According to a business report:

“…homes or places of business have been destroyed in this year's wave of storms, tornadoes and flooding. That means thousands of workers in the South and Midwest could be out of work for some time, potentially pushing up the nation's jobless rate and further taxing financially strapped state unemployment funds.”

Yet in 2004, when reporting on an October jobs report in which hiring had increased at the fastest pace in seven months, MSNBC somehow managed to find analysts who said the jump in hiring was due mainly to another form of natural disaster – hurricanes.  The business report at that time read:

“Some analysts were skeptical about the latest surge of hiring, pointing out that much of the unusually large jump in October stemmed from cleanup and rebuilding in Florida and other states that were ravaged by four hurricanes…”

That assessment is buoyed by an accompanying CNBC video (seen below) in which Senior Economics Reporter, Steve Liesman, asks President Bush’s economic advisor, Gregory Mankiw, about the ‘Hurricane Effect’ on a jobs report.

Most Americans are probably familiar with outspoken Kiss star Gene Simmons, but likely didn't know that he was born and partially raised in Israel.

With this in mind, when he was asked by CNBC's Jane Wells what he thought about President Obama's suggestion that Israel's borders be redrawn to pre-1967 levels, Simmons replied, "He has no f--king idea what the world is like because he doesn’t have to live there" (video follows with transcript and commentary):