Critic: CNN's "Falls of the Fat Cats" fails to produce villains

The Deal executive editor Yvette Kantrow writes Friday that the recent CNN documentary “Fall of the Fat Cats” about Wall Street executives living large despite the economic turmoil was lacking in actual “Fat Cats.”

Kantrow writes, “The soiree CNN is so proud to have crashed was sponsored by Cigar Report, a magazine published by Doubledown Media LLC, the same people behind those two other purveyors of luxury porn, Trader Monthly and Dealmaker. Exclusive, it wasn’t. Once inside, reporter Abbie Boudreau is shocked — shocked! — to find attendees smoking cigars, getting manicures and having their hair cut. After witnessing this bacchanalia of grooming, ‘you would have no idea that there actually is a crisis on Wall Street right now,’ Boudreau tells viewers.

“And who are these alleged fat cats, partying and primping while the market crashes? There doesn’t appear to be a banker, trader, Wall Street exec, even a mortgage broker in the bunch.

“In fact, among the partygoers Boudreau talked to on camera, two work in commercial real estate, one for a hedge fund research firm based in New Jersey. Not exactly perpetrators of the meltdown. But for CNN, they’re close enough. Indeed, the report goes from showing these folks with sort-of-finance-related jobs smoking cigars — the nerve of them! — to telling us about 24-year-olds driving Ferraris and helicoptering to the Hamptons to — who else? — Dick Fuld. Soon enough, we’re gawking at a photo of Fuld’s estate in Greenwich, Conn., and hearing about his luxurious homes on Park Avenue and Jupiter Island, Fla. And just when we think this can’t get any weirder or less relevant — what does Fuld have to do with a party thrown by Cigar Report? — we’re introduced to Jordan Belfort, a boiler-room scamster who spent 22 months in jail for pumping and dumping in the 1990s.”

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