If CNBC’s Rick Santelli wasn’t so firm (or perhaps delusional) in his convictions, Monday could have been very humbling for the financial analyst and tea party revolutionary.
Santelli was humiliated on-air Monday by fellow CNBC commentator Steve Liesman in a video clip that racked up scores of clicks and schadenfreude.
But even before Liesman rattled off all the ways his colleague has been wrong, the always-animated Santelli, who’s spent years pushing bunk doomsday scenarios about spikes in inflation that never came, screamed on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade that he’s been right all along.
Some traders standing nearby applauded — just as they did in 2009, when his famous rant about capitalism helped launch the tea party movement.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote Monday night that he has a hunch why the consistently wrong Santelli still receives such a warm reception among the traders.
Think about that: Liesman is of course right about Santelli’s record, and as I’ve pointed out many times this goes for all the inflationistas. So any trader who believed him would have lost money hand over fist. So why the applause?
Basically, I think, it’s because Santelli is their kind of guy; he hates the poors, he hates people who want to help the poors, he was trashing Janet Yellen for suggesting that she actually cares about the plight of the unemployed. And the traders feel the same way. So they like Santelli even though he’s been wrong about everything.
