Gasparino Goes to Fox

Charles Gasparino, until recently an on-air editor at the buisness-oriented cable-TV operation CNBC, has announced a move to Fox Business.

This prompts a retrospective. Charlie gave us all a memorable zone-out in late October 2008. Of course, that was a busy time for reporters with the Wall Street beat, but this was simply strange. "Closing Bell," anchor Dylan Ratigan introduced CG, obviously under the impression that CG was in possession of some new important information about Merrill Lynch.

The camera then framed Charles with the words "Management turmoil continues at Merrill Lynch" bannered beneath his face.

But whatever news or rumor Charles had been ready to convey on that subject never got out to us. Apparently, he took offense at the way he was introduced, the open-ended phrase "what do ya got?" -- what followed was an extremely odd colloquy over the Zen-like nature of that expression. This produced the expression, "shoot to the capitalist system." I wonder if he'll ever use that line on Fox?

In July 2009, Charles was one of the three "drama pundits" who received some attention from Janet Tavakoli in her column, under the heading, "Where Were the Drama Pundits [Whitney, Taleb and Gasparino] When it Mattered?"

Janet's point was that
Gasparino (like the others named there) boxes with shadows, and can not be taken seriously as a market analyst. ACtually, she was more kind to CG than she was to the other two named.

Late last year, HarperCollins brought out CG's book, The Sellout, on the crisis of 2008. I discussed that book and its portrayal of Dick Fuld, in this blog on November 15. He is a favorite target of amused scorn at Dealbreaker. But then, so is Fox Business News. So from the Dealbreaker POV, this is a perfect match. Here's a link for them in gratitude

So ... best of luck to the lovebirds.

EDIT: Here's another link that may be of interest.