CNN economic "expert" Ali Velshi: My advice is more useful than you knowing my qualifications

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0810/12/rs.01.html

KURTZ: Although if it had driven you to action on Monday morning, you would have saved about 15 percent of your nest egg given the week that the Dow has had.

Ali Velshi, would you hesitate to tell people to get out of the market, even if you believed that that was the best course, for fear of contributing to a stampede?

ALI VELSHI, CNN SR. BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

You know Cramer. I don't know if David does. David certainly doesn't know me. It doesn't stop him from writing about me. But Cramer is exactly the same off camera as he is on camera, he is emphatic.

You know, David, you wrote about me. You said something about how I'm loud and excitable. You know what? I'm loud -- you can talk to my mother and my sister. I'm loud and excitable all the time, and I'm emphatic in my belief that there are things that people have to understand here.

You also wrote that we are all opinion and few facts. I am on TV about 15 times a day. I invite you to find the one fact that I've been wrong about...

ZURAWIK: Ali, no, no, no, no. Listen. I'm not going to get excitable and loud either. Let's have a civil conversation.

VELSHI: I don't actually have a problem with excitable and loud.

(CROSSTALK)

ZURAWIK: But I do. I do at a moment of crisis.

VELSHI: That's great, but the American public need facts.

ZURAWIK: After the -- they do need facts...

VELSHI: And I have been providing the facts.

ZURAWIK: You are not providing the facts after...

VELSHI: What didn't I provide? What did I say that was wrong?

ZURAWIK: After the first bailout bill failed, Ali...

VELSHI: Yes?

ZURAWIK: ... you were literally sitting on the set screaming that it had to pass or Armageddon was going to follow.

VELSHI: I absolutely didn't say those words.

KURTZ: Hold on.

Ali, I'll give you a chance to respond. Rather than...

VELSHI: I actually said Armageddon will not come...

KURTZ: Hold on. Hold on. Rather than accepting Zurawik's characterization, let's play an exchange...

VELSHI: Oh!

KURTZ: ... that you had a couple weeks ago with a guy who hosts a business show on radio...

VELSHI: Right.

KURTZ: ... Steve Cordasco, and then we'll give you a chance to talk.

VELSHI: Yes.

ZURAWIK: OK. Fair enough.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: I can't even believe this, Mike. I don't understand what Steve's talking about. He couldn't be more wrong. I really hope none of your listeners listen to him.

This is not the shareholders on Wall Street. This is the person who can't get a mortgage today because the credit markets are frozen up. This is the person who can't sell their house because the buyer can't get a mortgage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mike, I'm sorry, who is that I am talking to?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ali Velshi.

VELSHI: Someone who knows a bit about how the markets operate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm sorry, and what does he do?

VELSHI: Steve, I understand how the credit markets...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know. I'd like to hear the qualifications, who I'm talking to. Are you a journalist, are you a market guy?

VELSHI: Really, the advice is more useful than the qualifications.

There is lots of evidence that too many people were getting mortgages on expensive houses during the past 10 years.

Not much evidence that too few people could get mortgages at the time Congress was debating the bailout bill.

...and Miller and the staff kept praising him, and I was disgusted.

I emailed the producer to please not have him on, again.

Ali Velshi said (approximate words): It's not a bailout of Wall Street. It's a bailout of all of us.

You have to demonstrate good credit and it has to be a property appropriately priced, and well within your ability to pay. But that's how it should have been all along.

Home ownership is overrated. There is nothing wrong with people renting. There is nothing wrong with apartments.

Turn on any radio station. I bet you will hear at least one ad every half hour for a company wanting to get you into a mortgage.

Does he have snazzy looking glasses?
THEN HE'S AN EXPERT!!! DO NOT QUESTION THE EXPERT'S STATUS!!! They don't hand out snazzy glasses and shaved heads to just anybody. He wouldn't be there if he wasn't the expert.
THINK, MAN!

You know, we're not actually market experts.

We're on our way to Wall Street to croak a mortgage baron named Savage Henry.

Savage Henry has cashed his check! Hey! Where are you going? COme back!

We're good market analysts! We're your friends, We're not like those others!

if the bailout bill didn't pass.

CNN was so alarmingly biased in favor of that POS bailout that it caused me to realize the MSM is every bit as dangerous now as they were before we invaded Iraq. Nothing has changed.

The people were calm and rational while the reporters were freaking out. CNN had to later admit that they were getting thousands of e-mails and calls asking them to tone it down, Velshi in particular.

g

The whole New York / Washington private-school elite was in on it.