Dennis Kneale Takes on Zero Hedge...And Fails

Watch the clip and then read this from Durden.

Zero Hedge vs. Dennis Kneale (you decide who is the Lone Ranger and who is P.T. Barnum):

• Tyler Durden and pals have chosen the completely insane profession of blogging
• He cares more about telling the truth than his own well-being (blogging eventually kills)
• He eviscerates Paulson, Blankfein and Goldman every chance he gets
• He understands that the real issue is the trillions in debt we are leaving our kids
• He is not a fan of generational rape
• He tells the truth about what he sees

Now Dennis Kneale's turn

• When his mouth is open Kneale is spouting useless nonsense
• Kneale cares more about his ratings and stature at CNBC than anything else in life
• He is an apologist for Wall Street and sucks up to Paulson, Blankfein and Goldman
• He believes Bailouts of Failure are a good idea
• He doesn't care about your kids, the debt or the deficits
• He is visually annoying and his voice wrenches my soul

Now to satisfy Dennis who asked in the clip for an argument against his incessantly annoying green shoot mantra, I offer the following:

Housing pain is just getting started; foreclosures will get much worse: ALT-A, Option ARMs, Jumbo Prime; credit card delinquencies on the rise; the tsunami of CMBS debt that will NOT be re-serviced; unemployment has yet to peak; imploding states; imploding municipalities; the soon-to-be-out-of-control federal debt; leveraged loan defaults; deteriorating health of regional banks; inept political leadership; much higher taxes on the horizon; consumer retrenchment; the continued debt de-leveraging; and zombie banks.

There is much more to our thesis but we don't wish to overwhelm Mr. Kneale.

Comments

[chuckytheme...:]

Kneale is another CNBC beetle headed dufus with IQ of mule hoof...typical jooo boy whose parents put him through college and has never workrd a day in his life...

Jul 01 05:06 PM

[conceptwizard:]

Dennis is very good at what he is hired to do. Put a false sense of hope in the minds of the masses. The everyday Joe that has no idea what a Zero Hedge is now does, this will enable the everyday Joe to seek the truth. This can only bode well for Tyler Durden and the Fight Club crew.
The minute that CNBC stoops low enough to try to discredit the Bloggers only debases their own credibility. It only reinforces postions like what Zero Hedge stands for. TRUTH! The real truth, not propaganda.
The fact that no honest reporting is done to investigate these issues brought forth by Zero Hedge and like Blogs, and promote the truth by media circles says it all. The are tools of the Government.
The media is capable of reporting only what is laid in front of them to report.

Jul 01 05:22 PM

[CautiousInv...:]

Dennis Kneale, who has no known intellectual capacities, was plucked from Forbes where he was viewed as an able writer.

With slow firing neurons, blocked synapses and other "special" qualities, Dennis could have done us a favor and remained in print and spared the world his less than telegenic presence and his unremarkable thinking and commentary.

He should not be required to either think or speak while on the air.

Jul 01 05:25 PM

[rogersails:]

Why is it that in every company I've worked for, guys like Kneale get ahead ? Somethin' in our culture. Not good.

Jul 01 05:58 PM

[Brownbullshat:]

If you google Dennis Kneale douchebag, you will get almost 1000 hits. Hmmm I wonder why

Jul 01 06:11 PM

[Big Al45:]

Think you are being too hard on douchbags.


On Jul 01 06:11 PM Brownbullshat wrote:

> If you google Dennis Kneale douchebag, you will get almost 1000 hits.
> Hmmm I wonder why

Jul 01 06:19 PM

[Mad Hedge F...:]

The thing to remember about CNBC is that they are in the entertainment business. Relying on them for investment advice can be expensive, and dangerous, and they will privately admit as much. When times were good they couldn't suck up to the likes of AIG, Madhoff, and Lehman enough. Anything to get a dinner invation or a tennis date. Your blood is on their hands.

Jul 01 06:55 PM

[PainfullyAware:]

Sounded like "Mike" started making too much sense and could not be allowed to undermine "Media Boy's" weak metrics for "Recovery".

Zero Hedge and the rest of the Bloggers were correct in not associating with this "Show". They are not interested in Debate.

I give "Mike" Kudos for attempting to "Represent Dissent" to the "People Of Propaganda".

Jul 01 07:12 PM

[ain't no fo...:]

The fact that that clueless sycophant and apologist for the lollipop kids is even on the air at CNBC speaks VOLUMES about the producers and talent scouts at CNBC/NBC, and about the man at the top of that entire organization.

This is GE for crying out loud, and look at the garbage they put out on this all day sucker - how the mighty have fallen.

They shoulda just kept shorting this thing into oblivion back in March and let it die a dignified death instead of live on as the caricature it is.

Jul 01 08:42 PM

[ken3602:]

It's almost like a wresler calls UFC fighter a coward after giving him 2 minutes to show his wresling skill. What Dennis is doing is merely a show to sell commercials, while many bloggers try very hard to bring hidden facts and reality to the surface (I am not saying they are always right, but most of them don't have a continuously manipulative intention.).

Dennis, you are a rich man by selling snake oil, but it doesn't make you a doctor. According to you, what in the world do we need all those bloggers and many newspaper reporters while we have your show and O'Reily factor? World is a much better place with only someone like you right???

Jul 01 08:56 PM

[TheSnail:]

Go ahead, overwhelm him. I like to see heads explode on tele-bision.

Jul 01 09:16 PM

[a fat panda:]

I feel much better. I thought that Dennis what too irrevelvant to be hated. It feels good to have company. He is a completely worthless one-button guy who has been banging the buy-buy-buy button since July 2007. The only downside here is that his fan club is too poor to own a PC with which to put up a defense.

Jul 01 11:24 PM

[Augustus:]

Dennis Kneale is working on being the perfect emulation of a chicken. He squawks nonsense when disturbed. If he gets his hair style just a little more on target, he would be perfect in the brooder house. I wonder if he has mastered that barnyard chicken walk pattern. CNBC once titled him as the "media analyst" or something near that. He should go back to covering Lohan without her panties.

I have never seen a network switch so completely from fairly balanced to so in the tank for Obama. Immelt left only Rick Santelli (with very little air time) as the only one speaking up about what is going on in the economy. The price was high but Obama was able to buy this network also. Kneale simply adds more nonsense to the mix.

Jul 01 11:57 PM

[CBTeas:]

Let's make sure we've got the scorecard right. CNBC is a tool of GE and what they promote is Corporatism. They seem far from pro-Obama, as (at least as it relates to CNBC) this audience is very pro-business and GE feels this station has to compete for the Fox crowd. Kneale is a lap-dog for Paulson, Goldman, etc..., but he and the whole cheerleading crowd of puppeteers on CNBC are cheering on the interests of corporate America--NOT Obama nor progressives. Kneale is a tool, and not the sharpest one in the shed, as they say.

I will not argue with the Pro-Obama bias at NBC affiliates throughout the rest of the GE family (NBC, MSNBC), but CNBC (and Kneale) does not fit the bill.

Jul 02 08:23 AM

[User241885/...:]

According to The Market Ticker's June 30 post, (market-ticker.denniger...), last year Kneale was caught on camera asking "What is the VIX?".

If you read through the entire column it just makes you incredulous that a guy like Kneale, so lacking in critical faculties, has somehow become an authority on financial markets. Blogger Denniger challenged Kneale to a debate, but I think the CNBC management will uncharacteristically make the wise decision not to let that happen.

As a fiduciary who is paid to identify and assess risks such as conflicts of interest, I am extremely gratetful for the work of financial bloggers like zero hedge, the market ticker and others I reference daily through SA. Conflicts of interest are the nature of the beast in our business but during the last two or three decades, we have witnessed corporate and governmental leadership in dealing with conflicts go from bad to worse. That the media has played the role of sycophant the entire way down is no more evident than in the case of CNBC.

Someone should poll long-standing participants in the financial industry to see who still puts any credence, finds any value, or even still skims the Journal, Barrons, regional newspapers or the financial news cable programs. It would be a good wake up call to the fourth estate.

Jul 02 01:17 PM

[Tony Daltorio:]

Don't pick on Dennis Kneale. It's not his fault that as a child he was dropped on his head - multiple times. Sort of like dribbling a basketball.......

Jul 02 01:45 PM

[demsco:]

Why all the comments about Zero Hedge, we were the ones who went on the show and called him what we did. We do the same thing, but concentrate less on trading then general issues. Zero Hedge did little, if anything, in responding, yet we went to the beast.

Jul 02 03:01 PM

[User241885/...:]

AnnuityIQ does deserve a hat tip at the very least because they did make a a thoughtful, well reasoned case before getting slammed by DK. Someone timed the response at 46 seconds before getting the gate.

If you review the video, Dennis Kneale cut the speaker short using the Gong show as the standard of merit. From the outset, CNBC was really not going to give any blogger a chance, which was too bad really because this whole controversy started on account of "the recession is over" call late DK made last week. It would be perfectly reasonable to expect a group of market professionals to weigh in on a market call like that.

Apparently taking a challenge was too much for DK as the lashback from bloggers then prompted him this Tuesday to take the extra step into the foul zone. That's when he invited bloggers to come on the air to discuss the recession issue. As we saw from the treatment he meted out to AnnuityIQ, he apparently was not so interested in discussing his market call as we was in staging a circus.

But the reasons that Zero Hedge gets the attention is that DK singled out ZH and did so in about as crude and uncouth a manner as I have ever seen displayed by the media. Again, review the video and count how many times DK uses the term "dickweed" in reference to ZH. We all read some aweful blogs every now and then and we all would agree that ZH is clearly not one of them. That's why we all keep returning to it.

Certainly there are bad bloggers out there, but over the last year, the readership following Tyler has increased noteably for the reason that the ZH staff does an incredible job getting the facts right on topics where you cannot get a straight answer from the establishment.

The irony of this is that DK himself employs the same demeaning manner he attributes to the better breed of bloggers. With any luck, both AnnuityIQ and Zero Hedge will pick up more readers as a result of Dennis Kneale's rampage. If this is what the public wants to watch on TV when they are looking for investment insights, then the public deserves whatever it gets.

"THE RECESSION IS OVER. LONG LIVE THE RECESSION!"

Jul 02 05:23 PM

[campbell:]

Most of the talking heads at CNBC are bullish. Even the voice that appears before commercials warns to get in the market now to avoid missing another upward spike. Apparently CNBC is long the market and should reveal this as is required from other commentators who hawk stocks on CNBC.

Jul 05 08:45 PM

[Ali Mogharabi:]

Dennis Kneale is simply annoying. His opinion is mainly based on his political beliefs, which is the worst thing that a financial journalist can do.

He is the type that we all wanted to beat da living crap of in high school. And he enjoyed that negative attention, because that was the only attention he could get.

I of course approached professionally and sent him a detailed email that addressed every reason he had cited that the recession is over. I couldn't get his email address, so I sent it to the powerlunch email address. No response.

He is basically one of those emotionally wackos that we all wanna stay away from. And that alone makes him very well qualified to be a reported on the good ol CNBC.

Jul 08 08:37 PM