Is This The End Of CNBC As We Know It?

One of the core aspects of mainstream financial media in general, and outlets like CNBC in particular, more so even than their chronic permabullish bias, is the seemingly endless gallery of “experts”, “pundits”, and other talking heads whose only requirement is wearing a business suit (in some very notable exemptions) who show up on TV, offer trade advice and recommendations – while either pitching their own trading services or hoping to offload their own existing positions- and if (or rather when) said advice leads to material losses are not heard from again until a certain period of time passes, and those who suffered listening to said “experts” have moved on, at which point the farce repeats itself.

The legendary example of this is none than Jim Cramer declaring loudly that “Bear Stearns is fine, don’t be silly” when asked by a viewer in early March 2008 if they should pull their money out of the bank. The stock was trading at $63; six days later JPM “bought” Bear for $2/share to prevent it from liquidating.

Why is Cramer still on the air? Because he was never held accountable to any standard of fiduciary responsibility. In short: he acted as an entertainer.

Furthermore, some have speculated that all financial media outlets like CNBC are ultimately nothing but an infomercial sounding board for bullish pundits to pitch their ideas (while at the same time doing the opposite of what they recommend as David Tepper and Jeff Gundlach recently demonstrated), or sell their services while giving outlets like CNBC 5 minutes content slots (for which CNBC pays a few hundred dollars per appearance) which in turn may explain CNBC’s collapsing ratings which as we reported a year ago, stopped using Nielsen out of embarrassment.

This all may be coming to an end thanks to the recently issued “fiduciary rule.”

Courtesy of Forbes, here is some background on what this rule is:

In April, the Department of Labor issued a fiduciary rule proposing that a “best interest standard” be applied across a broader range of investing advice such that any advisor getting paid to provide personalized investment advice — on things like what assets to buy or whether or not to roll a 401k into an IRA — be considered a fiduciary and have to put their clients’ interests first. Currently, brokers and advisors must only comply with a “suitability standard,” which means that they must make recommendations that are suitable to an individual’s investment needs, but they can also consider their own and their firms’ interests.