The Stalwart

How Many Dr. Doom's Are There?

Heny Kaufman, AKA Dr. Doom, lost substantial money based on the Madoff fiasco. The Madoff losses are a tragedy for those involves, but what struck me in this article was that I was unaware of Mr. Kaufman until now, and his Dr. Doom status. This now brings the total number of Dr. Doom's to four in my book, which has me wondering... how many Dr. Doom's are there?

Henry Kaufman, the former Salomon Brothers chief economist whose bearish views decades ago earned him the nickname "Dr. Doom," lost several million dollars with Bernard Madoff, making him one of the most prominent Wall Street figures to emerge as a victim of the alleged Ponzi scheme.

This is because, to my knowledge, in addition to Mr. Kaufamn, there is of course Dr. Doom Marc Faber, the Swiss Contrarian in Asia before it was popular, and Nouriel Roubini, who I would say plays the part of Dr. Doom best if you've ever seen a video of him speaking. He probably is the most recent person to earn the monicker when his years-old predictions seemed to finally come through in 2007, though perhaps not for the exact reasons he initially described. 

And finally, there is Stephen Roach, who is has long branded himself as one of the key bears on Wall Street, and who despite a recent embarassing about-face right before things collapsed, can still hold claim to being Dr. Doom due to sheer inertia.

The funny thing is that all of these very intelligent individuals nevertheless likely had very different explanations of the problems which the global economy faced and how things would unravel, yet all can now capture a share of the Dr. Doom glory. They do this by just being long known as a bear, by relating todays problems somehow back to their own original premises, or even just ignoring their original premises, not looking back, and describing and disparaging the financial problems which we now know.

Interesting lessons to be learned for aspiring pundits, though the Dr. Doom space now seems rather crowded. Probably best to now swing for the other extreme and build yourself as a well known optimist, though perhaps despite a tough market there is still an oversupply of such outlooks. Well, at the very least I'm pretty optimistic long term for the US economy at least, so perhaps its time to start claiming the space.

More to come

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the_revolving_door/clusterfck_of_talent_at_clusterstock_96477.asp

"Celebrity Is Not A Bad Word"

Watching the democratic convention, as Luke (ben Tim) Russert is interviewing Will.i.Am of 'Yes We Can' fame.

Russert asks what Mr. i.AM thinks of the Republican attacks that Obama is a mere celebrity, given that he himself is a celebrity. And though I'm guessing some will dismiss it, he actually has a great response "Celebrity is not a bad word". When there's a disaster, it's celebrities that frequently raise awareness and money.

Trivial? Not at all. Rallying the masses towards some end isn't an easy task. We have beacons (signalers) for a reason. Raising money is one benefit, but there are several others. So anyway, good answer.

If you're interested in the econ. of celebrity, you should read Tyler Cowen's 'What Price Fame'.

What's In The Water At MSNBC?

For some reason, the media woke up today and everyone decided to write article about MSNBC. According to a lot of reports (WSJ, Jossip, Politico) mainly citing unnamed sources (probably all the same ones grousing on the same day), all of the on-air talent is at each others' necks, and there's no adult supervision.

Probably there's some hyperventilating going on, though I have no doubt that Chris Matthews would like to sock Keith Olbermann in the head (or maybe I'm projecting, just cause I'd like to sock Keith Olbermann in the head). Beyond that, there are a lot of sharp egos and personalities on the channel now, including personal crush (kind of) Rachel Maddow.

So will it all work? Maybe. Fox News is just too obnoxious. CNN is for people who have trouble falling asleep. So MSNBC is always where I turn for politics coverage. But I think Portfolio.com's Jeff Bercovici nails it when he says MSNBC will not thrive simply as a left-wing Fox News:

Fox isn't rooted in conservative politics so much as it's rooted in a certain sensibility: populist, patriotic, anti-elitist, loud, fast, aggressive. The politics are a corollary of the sensibility more than the other way around. Everything Fox does is informed by this sensibility; it's why Fox & Friends feels so of a piece with Hannity & Colmes, and why the network is able to vamp so comfortably during lulls in the political news cycle with culture-war and celebrity stories.

Moreover -- and this is key -- everything on Fox is subordinate to this sensibility. If Bill O'Reilly were to go off the reservation, Roger Ailes would just dump him and make a new O'Reilly from scratch.

At MSNBC, it's all different. There's no top-down governing sensibility; whatever sensibility there is has emerged willy-nilly...

The whole thing is worth a read.

Sidenote: This afternoon, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was being interviewd by Tom Brokaw, and he really said that he has MSNBC.com bookmarked, and that he uses it as a key news source. Brokaw, of course, prodded him to say it, but I bet it was total rubbish.

 

Dark Knight is No Beverly Hills Cop

The best movie of all time is Beverly Hill Cop with Eddie Murphy. The first one. It doesn't get that much respect in terms of the annals of cinema, but critics did like it at the time. It holds up too, even watching all these years later in 2008. So I was happy to see this chart on BoxOfficeMojo, which offers the all-time box-office standings inflation-adjusted. With all the talk about how The Dark Knight is closing in on Titanic, for kind of the domestic box, it's worth throwing some cold water. In fact, TDK is 39th all time. And look who it's behind.

More Me-Made Media

I've decided to do something with my heretofore unused domain name JosephWeisenthal.com. It's another blog! Thought I'd give Tumblr a spin, since I've got a lot of friends who us it, and it's a very well designed service. Plus it's made for the kine of inane and trivial stuff that doesn't make sense to post here, but which is too long to post on Twitter, where I'm already too active as it is. So if you care for more wisdom pearls from me, feel free to check it out. And if you don't give a pig's lick about it, then I don't blame you at all. But there is a picture of me over there, since you were so curious.

paidContent Sold To The Guardian

Just thought I'd use this space to congratulate Rafat & Co (which I'm part of) on the sale to Guardian. Great news.

I'll Miss You Takeru Kobayashi

Every 4th of July, since I moved to NYC in early 2004, I've made a pilgrimage down to Coney Island for the annual Hot Dog Eating championship. Last year was amazing, when an injured Takeru Kobayashi broke his world record, but still lost to an American, the perfectly-named Joey Chestnut.

Sadly, no hot dogs for me this year. Some friends of ours are having a party on that day, and adulthood compels me to go to that, rather thing watching folks Solomon (break them in half before eating) hot dogs for 12 minutes. And you know how it goes, once you miss one year and the streak ends, there's no telling when you're going back.

Had I had the time, I wanted to launch an unofficial site for this year's event at SurfAndStillwell.com. That's the intersection down in Coney Island where they hold the event. Seeing as I may never get the chance to do something with it, I'm putting it up for sale. Ping me if you're interested.

What Will Wall-E Do This Weekend?

Since I don't have kids, I obviously won't be seeing Wall-E this weekend. And to those adults who are going by themselves: it's a cartoon. Still, there's a lot on the line. Nikki Finke's friendly box-office gurus see a $70 million weekend in the offing. MSNBC was saying the same thing this morning, so that's the consensus. But what's the whisper number? $80 million?

Other Wall St. analysts are all seeing good things for the movie, though they kinda sound subjective: "(The movie) substantially exceeded our expectations." Um?

Meanwhile, on the social media scene, Wall-E seems to have way more blog-borne buzz than its obvious equivalents, so that may be a good sign. Though maybe not, see: Snakes on a Plane.

So, let's set the Vegas line at $70 million. Over/under and by how much?

Could Someone Explain Spot Runner To Me?

Seriously... there have been rumors for awhile that Spot Runner could be for sale. Possibly to Microsoft, possibly to some ad agency. Spot Runner is the company that offers read-made ads for your brand, which it can place at odd slots on TV. So basically, generic TV ads at remnant time slots. Whoop-de?

Seriously, I keep hearing how you can buy :30 of air time in Fresno for just $10 at 2:30 AM (theoretical example). What is so exciting about that?

Ok, maybe there's some marginal improvements to be made in the market for odd-hours/odd time slots, but is it really that exciting or something to jump for joy over? Ultimately, it seems, 3 AM in Fresno is 3 AM in Fresno, and if you can get that time slot for $10 or $5, it's probably worth about that much.

Ok, so where am I wrong and what am I missing?