CNBC Doing The Government's Work This Morning

I caught some of this morning's CNBC programming, to my continuing disappointment.

Despite allegedly being a business channel, the network relies heavy doses of biased so-called reporting from 'Red John' Harwood, who is also a New York Times political columnist.

Thus, during what was supposed to be a discussion of the wisdom of the current financial markets regulatory bill, pseudo-economics reporter Steve Liesman parroted Red John's apparent earlier interview with the co-anchors.

Liesman, who has great difficulty getting basic economics right, and rarely, if ever, refrains from approving liberal economic palliatives and dismissing free market initiatives, chose to spend all of his time approving and rehashing Harwood's earlier statements. Those evidently consisted largely of trashing Republican Majority Leader McConnell for leading the 41 GOP Senators to oppose the current bill because of its provision for explicitly bailing out large financial firms in the future.

A guest on this morning's program, former Paulson Treasury aide and Assistant Secretary Neel Kashkari pointed out that it would make a lot of sense to wait for the admittedly-political Congressionally-appointed blue-ribbon panel investigating the financial mess of the last few years to finish their job before moving forward on any legislation.

In how many businesses would recent failures be handled the way Washington is handling this one? Having experienced a failure, what competent CEO and senior executive team would make significant changes before having agreed upon at least a tentative explanation for that failure?

For their reticence in rushing to redesign the US financial system, Republicans are once again being castigated for counseling delay and examination of the recent problems in the US financial sector.

Later on, Pennsylvania Democratic Representative Paul Kanjorski decried delays in passing the Dodd bill, criticized former President George W. Bush as not understanding economics, despite the fact that he is the only President who earned and MBA, and from a major program.

What I took away from this morning's bizarrely political focus on CNBC is that the network has chosen to push the Dodd bill, despite several obvious facts.

First, Dodd allowed himself to be influenced by sector participants to look the other way on many dangerous practices while heading the Senate committee overseeing the sector.

Second, none of the majority party's leaders or members have admitted to Fannie's and Freddie's role as origins of the financial problems, nor of the current majority party's mandating those GSEs to securitize low-quality mortgages.

Third, the panel appointed by Congress to explore and explain the reasons for and process by which the financial sector problems occurred is months away from any conclusions.

With knowledge of these facts, who in their right mind would rush to legislate a solution? And who in the media would omit some facts, distort political coverage and generally paint a false picture in order to facilitate the passage of such premature, ill-conceived and flawed 'reform?'

CNBC, I guess. Which tells you a lot about what to believe on that network. If it's not straight, factual business news, or opinions about business from an apolitical source, consider it propaganda.