More Not-So-Subtle Liberal Bias On CNBC This Morning

This morning was one of those on CNBC's Squawkbox program when its overall liberal bias was blazingly explicit.

Sure, liberal co-anchor Becky Quick was replaced this morning by the network's most conservative journalis and on-air personality, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera.

But the guest host for the morning was a guy named Harry Wilson, billed as a member of the administration's Treasury team which bailed out GM and Chrysler. During the last hour, New York Times columnist and, thus, card-carrying liberal journalist Tom Friedman served up his brand of liberal ideology, though he attempted to cloak it in the guise of being for the 'little guy.'

First Harry Wilson. This guy was some piece of work. When quizzed by Cabrera, Wilson gave an unvarnished spiel which was, I am guessing, a very close approximation of the case made inside Geithner's Treasury for raping bondholders with legitimate senior claims and shoveling money into the two automakers and/or, more correctly, their employees' union's pension funds.

The single statement which gave Wilson away as narrowminded or uninformed was, after his longwinded claim that to fail to save GM in the manner the administration did was to have brought about Ford's liquidation, his reponse to Cabrera's contradicting reply. She contended that, should things have become that bad, vulture financiers would have gladly stepped in to rescue Ford as the lone remaining Detroit-based automaker.

Wilson countered, to paraphrase,

'What, in the world's largest car market, there'd only be room for one automaker?'

Just what does Wilson think BMW, Mercedez-Benz and a host of Japanese car makers with plants south of the Mason-Dixon line are? Chopped liver?

Well, what they are, are non-unionized car making facilities.

By the way, who is to say that in such a low-margin business, the US even wants substantial assets deployed for what are, in real market terms, fairly low-paying jobs? The equity markets have signaled that GM and Chrysler weren't desirable investments with those characteristics.

Wilson belied his attempt at presenting himself as objective by clearly dismissing market/investor opinion and attempting to justify the federal government's financial override of said dollar votes.

Then the network's commercial promos billed Tom Friedman as 'the one man who can speak' on various wide-ranging business, economic and political topics. Which Friedman felt completely comfortable doing with clear confidence that he is right, and you or anyone else who disagrees with him is wrong.

First Friedman let all and sundry know that we must- must- have higher taxes. Spending cuts just aren't going to do it. No empirical evidence- just big Tom's instincts.

Then he solemnly invited America to form a vibrant third party, because Congress isn't working. That's right- the Tea Party's re-invigoration of the GOP doesn't count for s**t. Not in Tom's view.

No, you see, because it wants spending cuts, not higher taxes. And since Tom doesn't allow for that, another force must appear to rescue America.

Then Tom weighed in against Joe Kernan's charge that he is, well, what he is- a big-spending liberal apologist who works for the New York Times. Friedman declared that he was for small business and becoming a an 'innovation nation.'

Trouble is, as Rick Santelli noted a few minutes later, over-regulation along the lines of this morning's lead staff editorial in the Wall Street Journal make that unlikely in today's environment.

That's just a small example of how CNBC, by its selection of overtly-liberal guests and hosts, skews its presentation of economics, business an finance to the liberal end of the spectrum.