Dorfman: Financial media acting badly

Long-time business journalist Dan Dorfman writes on The Huffington Post about what he perceives to be major problems in what the financial media are telling consumers.

Dorfman writes, “I, for one, thought sheer lunacy had struck the financial media when someone told me some time ago that CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow had actually predicted the Dow would hit 50,000 by 2020. But I later wrote that forecast off — for which Arianna Huffington recently and justifiably took Kudlow to task — as one of those isolated moments of media madness.

“Apparently, I was wrong. It seems it wasn’t an isolated case. Media madness in the financial arena seems to be spreading. Recently, the usually reliable Fox Business Network served up another incredulous dilly — a segment featuring stocks ‘you can hold forever.’

“The inference was clear: in the midst of all the unknowns, uncertainty and risk in the current financial arena, Wall Street is offering a select number of equities that you simply can’t afford to pass up because they’re all sure to go up if you just buy and hold on.

“The network never said it directly, but in actuality its ‘hold forever’ thesis signals the creation of a totally new dimension in the equity market, one in which losing money is supposedly passé and in which you are now assured of pocketing a profit if you simply have patience.

“You don’t believe it, right? Me neither. But don’t tell me; tell those exuberant folks at Fox.”

Read more here.