- by New Deal democrat
CNBC's Squawk Box is a total disaster, and ALL of the anchors need to go, but especially the totally-out-of-control Joe Kernan.
ECRI's Lakshman Achuthan was on this morning, defending their recession call (BTW, if a recession doesn't start in the next 7 1/2 weeks, they're wrong.)
Much as I have been critical of this recession call, Achuthan has been clear as a bell since forever about ECRI's definition of recession being the NBER's definition -- a pronounced downturn in production, sales, income, and employment, generally measured by real retail sales, industrial production, real income, and payrolls.
Not only did both Joe Kernan and Becky Quick not know what the actual definition of a recession is (they kept insisting it was two quarters of negative GDP) they both kept interrupting Achuthan who was patiently trying to educate them -- for FIVE MINUTES!
Achuthan was able to finally say that he (correctly, imo) is worried about the real hourly income being negative, and being an a very grave area of concern. I happen to think he is overlooking the effect of refinancing. He thinks it is most likely that the recession he sees will be shallow.
It would be nice if there were an intelligent morning financial program where the hosts actually were able to flesh out his thought process more than that (oh yeah, and know what a recession actually is).
