by Janet Tavakoli
Why didn't Charlie Gasparino give early warning of Wall Street's implosion? Perhaps because his on air reporting isn't hard hitting. On the topic of Wall Street, the only "f-bomb" Gasparino failed to drop at CNBC is the fraud pulled off by Wall Street fueling massive problems for the American economy. Let's hope he does a better job at Fox Business News.
Gasparino may break some Wall Street gossip, but don't look to him for cutting-edge insightful analysis. Here's an example of his early insights on Bear Stearns: "Jimmy Cayne built Bear Stearns from the ground up with one key ingredient: guts. We induct a Wall Street icon."*
Meanwhile, financial journalist Matthew Goldstein raised early questions about Bear Stearns's CDOs (in 2005), and he and Bloomberg News's Jody Shenn broke the story about the Bear Stearns Asset Management's doomed IPO (May 2007), the harbinger of the Bear Stearns collapse one year later.
Footwork Needs Work
After-the-fact reporting is not the same as being "ahead" of everyone else. As we discussed Merrill Lynch in October 2007, Gasparino asserted: "When we reported [Merrill's write-downs] here three weeks ago...ahead of anyone else" right after I point out I wrote an article, "The Predator's Fall,"about Merrill's coming write-downs ten months earlier (and gave warnings about Wall Street's phony products, overrated products, and excessive leverage much earlier than that).
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