访谈录 2009-05-04&05-06 金融危机中新闻媒体的角色

I mean, I gotta tell you. You know, I understand you want to make finance entertaining. But it's not a f… game. And I, when I watch that, I get, I can’t tell you how angry that makes me. Because what it says to me is, you all know, you all know what's going on. You know, you can draw a straight line from those shenanigans to the stuff that was being pulled at Bear and at AIG and all this derivative¹ market stuff that is this weird² Wall Street’s side bet.

 

Jon, don't you want guys like me who've been in it to show the shenanigans. What else can I do? I mean last night show...

 

No…, I want desperately³ for that. But I feel like that's not what we’re getting. What we’re getting is, listen, you knew what banks were doing and yet were touting⁴ it for months and months. The entire network was. And so now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy once in a life time tsunami⁵ that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous⁶ at best and criminal at worst.

 

But Dick Fuld who ran Lehman Brothers called me in. (Right.) He called me in when the stock was at 40 'cause I was saying that, look, I thought the stock was wrong, I thought it was the wrong place to be, brings me in, lies to me, lies to me, lies to me, I’ve known him for 20 years.

 

The CEO of a company lied to you?

 

Shocker. Stop trading.

 

But isn’t that financial reporting? Well, I mean, I guess, what you feel is the role of CNBC?

 

Look, I have called for star chambers⁷. I want kangaroo courts for these guys. I really do. I want indictments⁸. We've not seen any indictments. Where are, where’s the indictments for AIG? I’ve been, I told the Justice Department, here’s the way you get the indictments.

 

It's very easy to get on this after the fact. The measure of the network and measure of mass (media), CNBC could act as, you know, in some ways. Look, nobody’s asking for them to be a regulatory agency. But can, what, whose side are they on. It feels like they have to reconcile, is their audience, the Wall Street traders that are doing this for constant profit on a day to day, the short term. These guys, these companies were on a Sherman's March through their companies, financed by our 401K’s and all the incentives⁹ of their companies were for short term profit. And they burned the f…house down with our money and walked away rich as hell. And you guys knew that that was going on.

 

Okay. All right, I have a wall of shame. Why don’t I have banana cream pies 'cause I throw them at CEOs. Do you know how many times I have pantsed CEOs on my show?

 

But this isn’t as Carly Simon would say, this song ain't about you.

 

OK, all right. You’re right. I don't wanna personalize it. But I think that we have reporters who try really hard. We are not always told the truth. But most importantly the market was going up for a long time. And our real sin I think was to believe that it can continue to go up a lot in the face of what you describe, which is a lot of borrowing, a lot of shenanigans and I know I did. I’ll bring it up. I didn't think that Bear Stearns was gonna evaporate overnight. I didn't. I knew the people who ran it. I had always thought they were honest. That was my mistake. I really did, I thought they were honest. Did I get taken in 'cause I knew them from before? Maybe to the some degree. The guy who came on from Wachovia was an old friend of mine who’d helped hire me. I trusted him.

 

Honest or not, honest or not in what world is a 35 to 1 leverage¹⁰ position sane¹¹?

 

The world that made you 30% year after year, after year beginning from 1999 to 2007 and it became very difficult to decline.

 

But isn't that part of the problem? Selling this idea that you don't have to do anything. Any time you sell people the idea that, sit back and you’ll get 10 to 20 percent on your money. Don't you always know that that's gonna be a lie. When are we gonna realize in this country that our wealth is work, that we’re workers, and by selling this idea of "hey, man, I'll teach you how to be rich." How was that different than infomercial?

 

Well, I don't think... I think that your goals should always be to try to expose the fact that there is no easy money. I wish I’d found Madoff. I wish everyone else had found Madoff.

 

But there are literally¹² shows called “Fast Money”.

 

Well, I think that people, there is a market for (it) and you give it to them. And I think we do...

 

There is a market for cocaine¹³ and hookers.

1 derivative   

n.派(衍)生物；adj.非独创性的，模仿他人的

参考例句：

• His paintings are really quite derivative.他的画实在没有创意。
• Derivative works are far more complicated.派生作品更加复杂。

2 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

3 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

4 touting   

v.兜售( tout的现在分词 )；招揽；侦查；探听赛马情报

参考例句：

• He's been touting his novel around publishers for years. 他几年来一直到处找出版商兜售自己的小说。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Technology industry leaders are touting cars as a hot area for growth. 科技产业领袖吹捧为增长热点地区的汽车。 来自互联网

5 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。

6 disingenuous   

adj.不诚恳的，虚伪的

参考例句：

• It is disingenuous of him to flatter me.他对我阿谀奉承，是居心叵测。
• His brother Shura with staring disingenuous eyes was plotting to master the world.他那长着一对狡诈眼睛的哥哥瑞拉，处心积虑图谋征服整个世界。

7 chambers   

n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅

参考例句：

• The body will be removed into one of the cold storage chambers. 尸体将被移到一个冷冻间里。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Mr Chambers's readable book concentrates on the middle passage: the time Ransome spent in Russia. Chambers先生的这本值得一看的书重点在中间：Ransome在俄国的那几年。 来自互联网

8 indictments   

n.（制度、社会等的）衰败迹象( indictment的名词复数 )；刑事起诉书；公诉书；控告

参考例句：

• A New York jury brought criminal indictments against the founder of the organization. 纽约的一个陪审团对这个组织的创始人提起了多项刑事诉讼。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• These two indictments are self-evident and require no elaboration. 这两条意义自明，无须多说。 来自互联网

9 incentives   

激励某人做某事的事物( incentive的名词复数 )； 刺激； 诱因； 动机

参考例句：

• tax incentives to encourage savings 鼓励储蓄的税收措施
• Furthermore, subsidies provide incentives only for investments in equipment. 更有甚者，提供津贴仅是为鼓励增添设备的投资。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

10 leverage   

n.力量，影响；杠杆作用，杠杆的力量

参考例句：

• We'll have to use leverage to move this huge rock.我们不得不借助杠杆之力来移动这块巨石。
• He failed in the project because he could gain no leverage. 因为他没有影响力，他的计划失败了。

11 sane   

adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的

参考例句：

• He was sane at the time of the murder.在凶杀案发生时他的神志是清醒的。
• He is a very sane person.他是一个很有头脑的人。

12 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

13 cocaine   

n.可卡因，古柯碱（用作局部麻醉剂）

参考例句：

• That young man is a cocaine addict.那个年轻人吸食可卡因成瘾。
• Don't have cocaine abusively.不可滥服古柯碱。