In early December 2009, LA Times reporter James Rainey penned a diatribe against Glenn Beck, a pro-gold TV announcer (perhaps the only major television personality to favor gold). At the time, I wrote a letter to the bankruptcy court overseeing the bankruptcy of the firm that owns the LA Times suggesting that Glenn Beck be appointed the LA Times's editor ad litem (i.e., for purposes of litigation) since their investment advice has been consistently wrong and Beck has been right.
Over the past year gold has gone up 29.7% while the S&P 500 has gone up 13%. Both are fueled by pro-Wall Street monetary policies.
I am sending Rainey the following e-mail:
Dear Mr. Rainey:
On December 9, 2009 you wrote an article claiming that Mr. Glenn Beck's advocacy of gold as an investment was due to his alleged breach of fiduciary duty, although you failed to outline any fiduciary relationship between Mr. Beck and the metal. Over the past year, from January 1 2010 to January 1 2011 gold has gone up 29.7% while the S&P 500 has gone up 13%. You seem to have been wrong.
The matter isn't just that you are a sorry excuse for an investment analyst. Nor is it just that you are a sorry excuse for a journalist. Virtually all of the legacy media has that in common with you. Rather, it is the peculiar stupidity that you demonstrated. You failed to consider that there might be reasons for a gold bubble that can carry it to $3,000 or more. The dumber students who believed fairy tale Keynesian economics advocated in America's universities seem to have become journalists. You are a case in point.
Why don't you educate yourself and read some Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard?
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Showing posts with label james rainey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label james rainey. Show all posts
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Bankruptcy Court Should Appoint Glenn Beck Editor of LA Times
PO Box 130
West Shokan, NY 12494
December 9, 2009
Honorable Kevin J. Carey, Chief Judge
c/o David D. Berg, Clerk of Court
United States Bankruptcy Court
824 North Market Street 3rd Floor
Wilmington, Delaware 19801
Dear Judge Carey:
I urge you to consider requiring a shift in the editorial policy of the Los Angeles Times and other of the Tribune Co. newspapers, which I understand are currently being reorganized under chapter 11 in your court. Part of the reason for the Tribune Company’s bankruptcy is the LA Times’s one-sided ideological approach. Although a significant percentage of the Los Angeles population is Republican, the LA Times is extremely biased in a left-wing way, far to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. This contributes to the circulation declines. To reverse that, a more even handed editorial policy is required. To accomplish the mainstream approach, Glenn Beck ought to be appointed editor-in-chief of the LA Times in place of Russ Stanton.
I took an interest in this subject this morning because I saw an article by one of the LA Times’s reporters, James Rainey. Mr. Rainey claims that a conservative talk show host, Glenn Beck, is unethical for advocating investment in gold while he owns gold. Yet, the LA Times may have advocated investment in stock, when its ill fated employee stock ownership plan held stock in trust for Mr. Rainey and the editorial staff. Likewise, an investigation may reveal that the LA Times has published columns recommending long term investment in stocks when its publisher, Sam Zell, owned stock. Thus, Mr. Rainey is so biased that he may have inadvertently accused his own firm and its former owner of unethical conduct.
Gaffes like this have become so common among the American newspapers that many conservatives, such as myself, have stopped reading them. Naturally, this contributes to their declining circulation and loss of advertising revenue. Perhaps if Mr. Rainey and his editor, Russ Stanton, acted as journalists rather than pamphleteers for the feudalistic left, the LA Times would have a circulation above one million.
I would suggest that to make the LA Times and the Tribune Company more competitive that you ask Glenn Beck to become editor in chief. You will notice that Fox News, which is not the New York Times in terms of content but is much fairer and does not aim to serve as pamphleteer for the left wing of the Democratic Party as do the LA Times and the New York Times, has been outselling the other networks and the entire newspaper industry. Why not call Mr. Beck and ask him to help?
Why allow badly educated reporters like Mr. Rainey to continue to abuse shareholders and investors?
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com
West Shokan, NY 12494
December 9, 2009
Honorable Kevin J. Carey, Chief Judge
c/o David D. Berg, Clerk of Court
United States Bankruptcy Court
824 North Market Street 3rd Floor
Wilmington, Delaware 19801
Dear Judge Carey:
I urge you to consider requiring a shift in the editorial policy of the Los Angeles Times and other of the Tribune Co. newspapers, which I understand are currently being reorganized under chapter 11 in your court. Part of the reason for the Tribune Company’s bankruptcy is the LA Times’s one-sided ideological approach. Although a significant percentage of the Los Angeles population is Republican, the LA Times is extremely biased in a left-wing way, far to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic Party. This contributes to the circulation declines. To reverse that, a more even handed editorial policy is required. To accomplish the mainstream approach, Glenn Beck ought to be appointed editor-in-chief of the LA Times in place of Russ Stanton.
I took an interest in this subject this morning because I saw an article by one of the LA Times’s reporters, James Rainey. Mr. Rainey claims that a conservative talk show host, Glenn Beck, is unethical for advocating investment in gold while he owns gold. Yet, the LA Times may have advocated investment in stock, when its ill fated employee stock ownership plan held stock in trust for Mr. Rainey and the editorial staff. Likewise, an investigation may reveal that the LA Times has published columns recommending long term investment in stocks when its publisher, Sam Zell, owned stock. Thus, Mr. Rainey is so biased that he may have inadvertently accused his own firm and its former owner of unethical conduct.
Gaffes like this have become so common among the American newspapers that many conservatives, such as myself, have stopped reading them. Naturally, this contributes to their declining circulation and loss of advertising revenue. Perhaps if Mr. Rainey and his editor, Russ Stanton, acted as journalists rather than pamphleteers for the feudalistic left, the LA Times would have a circulation above one million.
I would suggest that to make the LA Times and the Tribune Company more competitive that you ask Glenn Beck to become editor in chief. You will notice that Fox News, which is not the New York Times in terms of content but is much fairer and does not aim to serve as pamphleteer for the left wing of the Democratic Party as do the LA Times and the New York Times, has been outselling the other networks and the entire newspaper industry. Why not call Mr. Beck and ask him to help?
Why allow badly educated reporters like Mr. Rainey to continue to abuse shareholders and investors?
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com
James Rainey and Glenn Beck
I just wrote this e-mail to Jim Rainey of the LA Times.
>Dear Mr. Rainey: I am curious if there has been a single conservative of whom you have had much that is positive to say? If so, please do tell who that person is. I will search your writing on him and post the history on my blog. Thanks, Mitchell Langbert.
Rainey accuses Glenn Beck of unethical conduct in advocating gold. This accusation misconstrues the reasoning behind prohibition of insider trading. Insider trading can exist only where there is a fiduciary duty to shareholders. It emanates from the duty insiders have to protect them. If insiders divulge information that artificially inflates the stock price temporarily, this can hurt the shareholders. Thus, insider trading is illegal.
But to say that an announcer should be prohibited from advocating an asset class, especially where he divulges publicly that he holds that asset, is ridiculous. This is what Mr. Rainey incompetently claims. There is no such thing as insider trading with respect to gold. There is no fiduciary duty to a metal.
The history of media attitudes toward gold has largely been one of lying and deception, in particular pandering to Wall Street, and Mr. Rainey appears to be no exception.
Wall Street dislikes gold for several reasons. First, Wall Street profits handily from the Federal Reserve paper money system. This is because the present value of expected dividends is increased by reductions in interest rates (increases in the money supply), a policy that the Fed has relentlessly pursued since the 1930s. Second, increases in the money supply are handed first to Wall Street via the money center banks. The subsequent circulation of money around the economy then increases prices. This transfers wealth from consumers to Wall Street, a policy that the New York Times has long advocated. Thus, academic and media sources, to include William Greider in his book Secrets of the Temple, advocate the central bank. But they do so by insisting that the paper money system helps the poor. As Karl Popper pointed out in Open Society and Its Enemies, lying about altruism has long been a tactic of collectivists. Thus, pro-Wall Street feudalistic "progressives" pretend to object to increases in income inequality and stagnant real wages, both of which are direct products of the monetary system that they advocate, including Mr. Rainey's LA Times.
Thus, in 1999 and 2000 Mr. Rainey's LA Times, the New York Times, Bloomberg Television and other Wall Street/Democratic Party inflationists were touting Internet and technology stocks, right before they fell by 80%. Do you want to take Mr. Rainey's advice given that his employer has been wrong almost every time?
Now, Mr. Rainey and his socialist-for-the-rich comrades attack gold. Rainey's article is rife with the kind of lying and double talk that has always characterized the Wall Street/Democratic Party media: the claim that there is such a thing as an "expert" in investing, for instance. Did this expert tell Mr. Rainey to invest in gold in 2001 and make him rich? Or did Mr. Rainey follow the LA Times's own repeatedly incompetent advice and invest in stocks in 1999 and 2008?
Rainey writes:
"When first confronted with the suggestion he might have a conflict of interest last week, Beck responded in characteristic fashion."
I am curious what that conflict of interest would be. Mr. Beck appears to say that he favors buying gold, and he has bought gold. He has announced this to the public. There is no conflict. He is doing what he says. If he were selling gold and telling people to buy it I would have questions. But is every single announcer on television who says that they think the stock market will go up and holds stocks unethical? Or is Mr. Rainey a biased, incompetent clown?
>Dear Mr. Rainey: I am curious if there has been a single conservative of whom you have had much that is positive to say? If so, please do tell who that person is. I will search your writing on him and post the history on my blog. Thanks, Mitchell Langbert.
Rainey accuses Glenn Beck of unethical conduct in advocating gold. This accusation misconstrues the reasoning behind prohibition of insider trading. Insider trading can exist only where there is a fiduciary duty to shareholders. It emanates from the duty insiders have to protect them. If insiders divulge information that artificially inflates the stock price temporarily, this can hurt the shareholders. Thus, insider trading is illegal.
But to say that an announcer should be prohibited from advocating an asset class, especially where he divulges publicly that he holds that asset, is ridiculous. This is what Mr. Rainey incompetently claims. There is no such thing as insider trading with respect to gold. There is no fiduciary duty to a metal.
The history of media attitudes toward gold has largely been one of lying and deception, in particular pandering to Wall Street, and Mr. Rainey appears to be no exception.
Wall Street dislikes gold for several reasons. First, Wall Street profits handily from the Federal Reserve paper money system. This is because the present value of expected dividends is increased by reductions in interest rates (increases in the money supply), a policy that the Fed has relentlessly pursued since the 1930s. Second, increases in the money supply are handed first to Wall Street via the money center banks. The subsequent circulation of money around the economy then increases prices. This transfers wealth from consumers to Wall Street, a policy that the New York Times has long advocated. Thus, academic and media sources, to include William Greider in his book Secrets of the Temple, advocate the central bank. But they do so by insisting that the paper money system helps the poor. As Karl Popper pointed out in Open Society and Its Enemies, lying about altruism has long been a tactic of collectivists. Thus, pro-Wall Street feudalistic "progressives" pretend to object to increases in income inequality and stagnant real wages, both of which are direct products of the monetary system that they advocate, including Mr. Rainey's LA Times.
Thus, in 1999 and 2000 Mr. Rainey's LA Times, the New York Times, Bloomberg Television and other Wall Street/Democratic Party inflationists were touting Internet and technology stocks, right before they fell by 80%. Do you want to take Mr. Rainey's advice given that his employer has been wrong almost every time?
Now, Mr. Rainey and his socialist-for-the-rich comrades attack gold. Rainey's article is rife with the kind of lying and double talk that has always characterized the Wall Street/Democratic Party media: the claim that there is such a thing as an "expert" in investing, for instance. Did this expert tell Mr. Rainey to invest in gold in 2001 and make him rich? Or did Mr. Rainey follow the LA Times's own repeatedly incompetent advice and invest in stocks in 1999 and 2008?
Rainey writes:
"When first confronted with the suggestion he might have a conflict of interest last week, Beck responded in characteristic fashion."
I am curious what that conflict of interest would be. Mr. Beck appears to say that he favors buying gold, and he has bought gold. He has announced this to the public. There is no conflict. He is doing what he says. If he were selling gold and telling people to buy it I would have questions. But is every single announcer on television who says that they think the stock market will go up and holds stocks unethical? Or is Mr. Rainey a biased, incompetent clown?
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