Jon Najarian

More Trouble at CNBC? Network's Macke Reportedly at Odds with Management

Is there another shakeup imminent at CNBC? Since the economy has been on the rocks, NBC Universal's financial network has been in the spotlight - political tug-of-war and all. This time, another one of the network's star on-air personalities, Jeff Macke, could be out.

Macke had been a cynical, sometimes conservative voice on CNBC's "Fast Money" and in other CNBC and MSNBC appearances, often pointing out flaws in the Democrat-controlled political culture in Washington, D.C. Now, he could be following the same path his former colleague Dylan Ratigan, who left CNBC's "Fast Money" in March.

Jon Najarian, a CNBC contributor and co-founder of OptionMONSTER.com predicted as much in a May 21 post on his Twitter site.

Media May Have Played a Role in Madoff Scandal, Says CNBC Contributor

Is it possible the financial media played a role in facilitating the alleged $50 billion Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme? An interesting theory by Jon Najarian, CNBC analyst and cofounder of optionMONSTER, contends that they very well may have unwittingly done just that. Madoff, he believes, used media publicity to lure investors to his scheme.

As Najarian explained on CNBC's Dec. 22 "Fast Money," Madoff got his reputation on Wall Street in the payment for order flow business. That's when a brokerage firm receives a payment as compensation for directing the order to the different parties that can execute the order at a lower cost.

"First of all you needed something that was very credible, because what he started off with was very credible," Najarian said. "As we both know, Dylan, he was in the payment for order flow business before anybody else. That meant folks that he was buying on the bid and selling on the offer back when the spread on NASDAQ stocks was 50 cents wide."