I Iz Smarter than Ben Stein?

Ok, so maybe I'm not actually more intelligent than the guy, but on the other paw, I don't misrepresent a simple concept like insolvency while pretending to know what it is, and that in general I know what I'm talking about--in fact, I'm pretty sure that in some sense I literally have no idea what I'm going on about. On the other other paw, he gets nationally published and I don't. Oh, and as recently as last December he was arguing that subprime wasn't a big problem, without any mention of Alt-A or prime, each the sum of which is a bigger crap sandwich (ambiguous?) than subprime, and of course not a peep (mmm...) about the larger credit derivative and institutional solvency problems, all of which those of us dutiful Grant's readers had pretty well quantified--as in, Really Really Big.

Addendum: sorry, but this stuff was just too good/bad--you decide which--not to add. From as recently as May 2008:

...it's now crystal clear that we're not in a recession...

The beautiful part is that because we're not meeting the definition of a recession -- two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth -- the pundits are trying to rewrite the definition, to make it just about anything they feel like making it. (Or, as I like to say, the new rules allow liberals to call a conservative administration's tenure a recession any time they have the urge.)*

I hope you've been buying while the market was down.

...the direction [of the market] sure looks like it'll be up for a while now.

*The partisan recession jab is especially rich, given that his "definition," while widely believed, certainly doesn't fit the official NBER's:

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough.

I have to agree with Ben here, though:

I wouldn't say business journalism is all bunk.

With the corollary that, sadly, most of it is.