[quote=Rich Toscano]How many times does a guy have to be catastrophically wrong before people will stop listening to him?[/quote]

It would appear that, to the media, Alan Greenspan has no shelf date. As long as the mass media offers Greenspan a soapbox, a large percentage of the citizenry will assume that what’s coming out of his mouth is believeable. Sad, but oh, so true.

I’m not sure who is charged with finding and booking “experts” to appear on televised news media, but I would be willing to bet that it’s the unpaid 20 year-old intern.

What was NBC thinking? (Of course, that, in itself, is a broad assumption on my part) You have the guy who is considered to be responsible in large part for the financial mess……on your well-respected, widely-viewed Sunday morning news show to ask him about our current and future financial health??? Really? There wasn’t another economist, financial journalist, or econ professor available? Maybe if Greenspan would have been one of 3 or 4 economists on a panel, or if they had had Greenspan interviewed by a hard-hitting financial journalist (no, not Jim Cramer. Someone who actually knows something about finance.)

No, so long as the mainstream media (and, yes, I am including Fox News in this group) continue to book these leeches, advertise their appearances heavily, and lob softball questions at them, people in America will take it for granted that they’re experts, and worth listening to. It’s so much easier doing that than reading a number of sources, weighing the content of each against the other, and coming up with one’s own thoughts and opinions.