Erin Burnett is the only thing of value on CNBC

The last couple posts have got me going on corporations acting all corporationy, so I thought I'd put my two cents in on investing and the stock market before I get back to other issues like Bush quitting golf as his sacrifice for the troops (not kidding). I don't pretend to know a lot about finance or the stock market, but I know a few things about what makes a business successful and human nature. CNBC and mutual funds have ruined Wall Street. The New York Stock Exchange used to be a place where good businesses with good business plans and a viable position in the market could go to gain capital to grow their business. In the past 20 years, Wall Street has moved away from this model and moved towards a place where people prey on the information disadvantaged.

The moron talking heads on CNBC and the douche bag mutual fund managers sitting in their postmodern offices talk up certain stocks and the value skyrockets even though people who are intimate with the industry and the company know that the stock is grossly overvalued. They have developed sophisticated software that can show that any and all stocks will be valuable if you just "buy and hold." What a crock of shit. Everyone knows that you can manipulate any group of numbers to tell you whatever you want. They will sell you on these horrible stocks and drive the price up then either they personally or their big clients will sell it short and the mom and pop investors will get the royal screw job. Their bottom line comes first, you come second, ALWAYS.

Basically, unless you have enough money to buy enough shares that you will get the CEO's ear or you are so knowledgeable of a specific industry that you can personally asses a company's value and plan, do not bother in Wall Street. Don't listen to those blathering idiots on CNBC (Bloomberg isn't any better, just because they have British accents doesn't make them smarter) or any mutual fund manager trying to sell you stock. Be smart. Know your knowledge disadvantage and invest in bonds or a stock that will pay you dividends that are higher than a bond payout.

He's not the first person to bring this up, but O.G. Mark Cuban has more insight into this.

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

After reading a recent story in AdWeek, I can't help but think of the W.C. Fields' classic, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. If these people are dumb enough to fall for this ploy, so be it. C'mon folks, you've got read everything with a critical eye, especially on the internet. I thought it was a clever ploy for this organization to garner awareness about its members' interest to stop copyright infringement. Furthermore, who got hurt by this anyway? The integrity of the fake student blogger? No. The integrity of Coach for creating awareness of the issue and increasing value to shareholders? No. The integrity of the entire blogosphere? Perhaps. But, creating some banal code of ethics will not solve the problem. It is up to the consumer to decipher who benefits from said action and if the benefactor has the means to affect the story. It is clear that the purse industry would benefit from a rally against counterfitters and they definitely had the means to make this.

Blogs are not and will never be transparent. If this fake blogger would have revealed her agenda, she would have immediately been revealed as the fraud that she is and no one would have visited her site. She was doing what she needed to do to promote her respective cause. I would argue that most traditional media outlets are guilty of the same journalistic sins. If the talking heads on CNBC revealed exactly what stocks they were personally investing in, one might second guess their recommendations too. (I'll leave my rant on CNBC for a coming post). So, we must take in what people blog about, babble about on CNBC, or write on the front page of the NY Times and critically analyze it by looking at who benefits from what is being said. And if you don't, the media and blogosphere will continue to never give a sucker an easy break.

On that note, I'd like to share with you what I feel blogs were actually put on earth for....sharing funny YouTube videos: