Don Luskin

Although the collapse of Bear Stearns happened back in March, the debate still rages as to what led to the failure of the 85-year old investment bank that had survived years of previous turmoil, including the Great Depression.

After JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon appeared on PBS's "The Charlie Rose Show" July 7 and commented on an August 2008 Vanity Fair article alleging that CNBC reporting could have been part of Bear Stearns' downfall, the cable channel's on-air editor Charlie Gasparino criticized what was claimed in the article and Dimon's reaction on CNBC's July 8 "Power Lunch."

"Well, you know, he [Dimon] said one thing that I'm just - listen, I didn't watch it," CNBC's Charlie Gasparino said, "I'm just going by what appears to be a transcript here: ‘Where there's smoke, there's fire.' Oh really? Sometimes where there's smoke, there's no fire, Jamie. I've got news for you."

If you're a believer in the Larry Kudlow creed, that "free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity," then look out, because George Soros is going to make you cringe.

A May 13 USA Today article by David J. Lynch profiled the Hungarian billionaire who said he sees traditional free market theory as "flawed."

"Of course, real life never matches up exactly with the theory's assumptions. But they represent, economists say, a useful way of making sense of a complex world," Lynch wrote.

"To Soros, the conventional approach is rubbish. Instead of a world of near-identical actors, coolly assessing their economic interests and acting with clear-eyed precision, he sees a world (and markets) governed by passion, bias and self-reinforcing errors," Lynch wrote. "Because fallible human beings are both involved in, and trying to make sense of, this world, they inevitably make mistakes. Those mistakes then feed on themselves in ‘reflexive' ways that, when taken to extremes, result in situations such as the now-deflating U.S. housing bubble."

The network news broadcasts are to blame for the American people's widely held misconception that the U.S. economy is in a recession, according to Media Research Center founder and President L. Brent Bozell III.

"How in the world is it that 81 percent of the American people believe that we're in a recession?" Bozell asked on CNBC's "Kudlow and Company" May 2. "Maybe it's because the national networks this year, and we've counted it, have talked about a recession over 500 times."