Squawk Box

It's not often someone in the media challenges the liberal point-of-view - especially on the issue of taxes when they become a means to redistribute income.

CNBC "Squawk Box" fill-in co-host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera wasn't afraid to buck the trend and challenge Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's senior economic adviser Austan Goolsbee.

Goolsbee appeared on the August 14 "Squawk Box" to defend an op-ed he wrote for the August 14 Wall Street Journal outlining Obama's tax plan. Caruso-Cabrera invoked the name of Milton Friedman, an economist who was a primary defender of free markets throughout the 20th century. Ironically, Friedman taught at the University of Chicago, where Goolsbee is a faculty member.

"WWMD, Austin - what would Milton do? Remember that," Caruso-Cabrera said. "Remember your roots - what got you to where you are."

Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has remained largely unhurt by the controversy over his "sweetheart" deal with mortgage lender Countrywide. But CNBC's "Squawk Box" co-host Carl Quintanilla finally bucked the media trend of ignoring the scandal and brought the loan up in an interview July 14.

Dodd appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box" in the wake of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's July 13 announcement that the federal government would take actions to prevent government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) from failing.

Quintanilla asked Dodd if his association with Countrywide, now owned by Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), compromised his ability to lead on the housing issue.

Coming off his April 2 interview with Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) on his show "Mad Money," CNBC's Jim Cramer told "Squawk Box" his job entails some hazards.

"You know, look, obviously I've had a lot of death threats," Cramer said on CNBC's April 3 "Squawk Box." "They're actual death threats. And, you go to the state police and the state police go to the local police and the local police call the guy and that's what you have to do, or you bring suit against them. I've had to do a lot of that."

Cramer emphasized his active response to anyone who threatened his life.

"You know, the death threats are not cool," Cramer said. "You know, anybody with a death threat, I go after them with everything I have."

For years, NewsBusters and the Business and Media Institute have informed readers about how the press, since George W. Bush was first elected, have tried to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by misrepresenting economic data in as negative a way as possible.

This is likely the cause of the public's continued pessimism about economic conditions even as the economy has expanded for 25 consecutive quarters.

On Tuesday, in an interview on CNBC, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune owner Sam Zell took this thinking a little further when he suggested to "Squawk Box" anchor Becky Quick that many of the economic problems facing the country today are caused by fear-mongering and politicking by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

As reported at CNBC.com (video available here, h/t NBer Gat New York):

After the Fed made an "emergency" 75-basis-point rate cut this morning, CNBC's "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer, who has gone from bull market cheerleader to bear market doom and gloomer in the last six months, said it was too little too late.

"[T]his is obviously the kind of action I was most fearful of - which is that they would have to go panic and that they would get way behind the curve," Cramer said on CNBC's January 22 "Squawk Box." "But, you know but once they do it, I'm less ... I can't hammer them as much. This is the kind of action if they had done it three months ago, we would have been safe."

On MSNBC's January 18 "Hardball," Cramer predicted the Dow Jones Industrial Average would decline 2,000 points over the next couple of weeks. However, he was a little less pessimistic after this rate cut.

Got some hot stock plays for 2008? CNBC's David Faber thinks you should factor in the recession that hasn't yet happened when you adjust your portfolio for this New Year.

CNBC "Squawk Box" contributor Faber warned investors on the January 7 "Squawk on the Street" that stocks reliant on business spending could hurt since a recession, he said, is imminent.

"Business spending, concerns about business spending overall. I think Anne Mulcahy [CEO] at Xerox (NYSE:XRX) may have said something about business spending," Faber said. "I'm hearing business spending slowing. That's the concern - what happens to the stock market in a recession because we're heading into one it looks like."

CNBC's ticking time bomb Jim "Mad Money" Cramer lashed out at the Federal Reserve again on January 2 for not cutting interest rates. This time he suggesting the Fed was intentionally doling out punishment to reckless investors.

"I have to tell you that I look at this situation and I say to myself, ‘They [the Federal Reserve] want it. They want a recession.'" Cramer said on CNBC's January 2 "Squawk on the Street." "They're Puritans. They want to punish the people who were reckless in their eyes and the punishment has still not finished being meted out."

Cramer was called into a discussion about the Fed with CNBC's David Faber and "Squawk Box" co-host Joe Kernan.

Since the stock and credit market turbulence began in July, NewsBusters has been informing readers that media continually predict recessions that never happen.

On the sad flipside, bearishness in the press can become so pervasive that an economic downturn ends up being an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy.

NewsBusters affiliate the Business and Media Institute made this very point in a late-November article by Amy Menefee entitled "Talking Ourselves Into Recession."

This concern is shared by business leaders like Craig Hester, CEO of Hester Capital Management, who during an interview with CNBC's Erin Burnett and James Cramer Friday spoke an inconvenient truth about media's impact on the economy that folks in the press sadly don't recognize as they disseminate pessimistic after pessimistic predictions often leading to people unnecessarily losing their jobs - or worse:

Who says businesspeople can't get a fair shake from the media? Just ask Warren Buffett, who knows the secret recipe for media adoration: support Democratic candidates who advocate populist social programs.

Buffett, known as the "Oracle of Omaha," was interviewed in San Francisco prior to a fundraiser for Clinton. Reporter Becky Quick referred to this appearance as a "special cause."

"Today he is in San Francisco and he's here for a very special cause - campaigning, or actually trying to raise money for Hillary Clinton, who's running for president," Quick said.

Two days after the U.S. Commerce Department reported an astounding 3.9 percent growth in gross domestic product, the U.S. Labor Department comes in with job data that exceeded analyst’s expectations.

The Labor Department reported a gain of 166,000 jobs in October and an unemployment rate that held steady at 4.7 percent for the second month in a row.

The night before the numbers were released, both the November 1 “NBC Nightly News” and “CBS Evening News” told viewers the possibility of an economic downturn hinged on these numbers.

Most people are probably not familiar with Joe Kernen, a morning anchor for the financial network CNBC. On Tuesday, he invited singer Sheryl Crow and “An Inconvenient Truth” schlockumentary producer Laurie David on to discuss their “Stop Global Warming College Tour.”

As Kernen tried to present the skeptics’ side of this debate, the ladies clearly got uncomfortable and, to say the least, a bit defensive with their interviewer.

For instance, when Kernen referenced the British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” and presented evidence from it refuting anthropogenic global warming theories, David astoundingly responded (video available here, h/t NB member Sick-n-Tired):