The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media, and Manipulation - Hardcover

Kurtz, Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684868792 ISBN 13: 9780684868790

Publisher: Free Press, 2000

Synopsis

Just as "spin" has taken over politics in America, so too has it come to define the long bull market on Wall Street. The booming trade in stocks, which has become a national obsession, has produced an insatiable demand for financial intelligence--and plenty of new, highly paid players eager to supply it. On television and the Internet, commentators and analysts are not merely reporting the news, they are making news in ways that provide huge windfalls for some investors and crushing losses for others. And they often traffic in rumor, speculation, and misinformation that hit the market at warp speed. Howard Kurtz, widely recognized as America's best media reporter, and the man who revealed the inner workings of the Clinton administration's press operation in the national bestseller Spin Cycle, here turns his skeptical eye on the business-media revolution that has transformed the American economy. He uncovers the backstage pressures at television shows like CNBC's Squawk Box and CNN's Moneyline; at old-media bastions like The Wall Street Journal and Business Week, which are racing to keep up with the twenty-four-hour news cycle; and at Internet start-ups like TheStreet.com and JagNotes, real-time operations in the very arena where fortunes are made and lost with stunning swiftness. Bombarded by all this white noise, who among the fortune tellers can investors really trust? Kurtz provides an indispensable guide with this eye-opening account of an unseen world, based on eighteen months of shadowing the most influential, colorful, and egotistical people in business and journalism. Among the people we meet in its pages are: Ron Insana, Maria Bartiromo, David Faber, Lou Dobbs, and the other famous faces of cable TV The manic king-of-all-media Jim Cramer, who juggles four different identities--Wall Street trader, television commentator, columnist, and Internet entrepreneur --with wildly varying degrees of success Shoe-leather reporters Steve Lipin, Chris Byron, and Gene Marcial, whose exclusives drive up stocks or quickly deflate them Superstar analysts Ralph Acampora, Abby Joseph Cohen, and Henry Blodget, whose predictions make the Dow and Nasdaq gyrate Internet CEOs Kim Polese and Kevin O'Connor, who struggle to ride the media tiger while promoting their high-flying companies No one has ever reported from inside the Wall Street media machine or laid bare the bitter feuds, cozy friendships, and whispered leaks that move the markets. Kurtz exposes the disturbing conflicts of interest among the brokerage analysts and fund managers whose words can boost or bash stocks --thanks to scoop-hungry journalists who rarely question whether these gurus are right or wrong. And he chronicles the journalistic hype that helped propel Net stocks into the stratosphere until they began plummeting back to earth. In a time of head-spinning volatility, The Fortune Tellers is essential reading for all of us who gamble our savings in today's overheated stock market.

About this title

From the Author

My assignment for the day was to hang with a Wall Street trader who was trying to save his rear end as the market came crashing down. It was October 19, 1987, and as the New York bureau chief for The Washington Post, I was drafted on a big breaking story, despite the fact that, like most Americans, I knew little about the stock market. I wound up spending the afternoon with John Mulheren, who seemed to me icy cool as the market plunged by 22 percent and he was losing millions of dollars. (Months later, Mulheren was arrested for waving a gun and threatening to kill legendary trader Ivan Boesky, whom he believed had implicated him in an insider-trading case, but that's another story.) In those days, few ambitious reporters wanted to cover business. It seemed like a backwater, a realm of dry statistics and quarterly earnings reports. Fortune and Forbes were considered trade publications. There were a handful of business shows on the air, such as CNN's "Moneyline," but otherwise television avoided the arena unless there was a market crash or some other calamity. The journalistic action was in politics, crime, sports -- anywhere but business. By the time I began work on The Fortune Tellers, the landscape had been utterly transformed. Business journalism was hot. Nearly everyone cared about Wall Street, thanks to 401-K retirement plans and online trading and a cultural revolution in which half of American families were now invested in the market. New financial magazines and Web sites were springing up, seemingly by the hour. CEOs like Jeff Bezos, Steve Case and Meg Whitman had become cult figures. Two cable networks, CNBC and CNNfn, covered the market's every burp all day long. Celebrities from William Shatner and Phil Jackson to Don Ricles and Lily Tomlin were making dot-com commercials. Even Howard Stern was talking about the market. You couldn't get on an airplane without seeing the latest Dow and Nasdaq numbers flashing on the seat in front of you. All of which raised for me some intriguing questions: Who among the steady parade of analysts, fund managers and commentators could we really trust? Was this explosion of financial advice worth a damn? And what role did journalism play in a world where every hiccup could send a stock hurtling toward the sky --or into the toilet? The results aren't pretty. The advice served up by many of these fortune tellers is not only contradictory, it's often wrong -- but almost no one in the media holds these folks accountable. The press often fails to blow the whistle on blatant conflicts of interest, as Wall Street analysts tout the stocks of companies that their own firms are either doing business with or hoping to snag as clients.

The talking heads themselves are often influenced by cozy relationships with their sources. That's true in other fields as well, but financial journalists are not just observers but players -- their scoops and stories can slice billions of dollars off a company's net worth in a matter of minutes. Wall Street, I learned, is like a snooty high school where half the people hate the other half -- and that sometimes has an impact on the coverage. Even worse, this is the only part of journalism where it's considered okay to report rumors, even bogus ones, on the theory that rumors move the market. But the media now serve as a giant echo chamber for this gossip, giving it legitimacy for millions who otherwise would never hear the Street chatter. Fortunately for me, the financial media machine is filled with all kinds of colorful personalities who do their thing under fierce pressures, making them compelling subjects for a behind-the-scenes narrative. Best of all, I got to hang with CNBC's Money Honey, Maria Bartiromo, who, I can report, is a lot better looking than John Mulheren. -- Howard Kurtz

About the Author

Howard Kurtz is the media reporter forThe Washington Post and the author of three previous books, including the New York Times bestseller Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine. He is the host of the weekly CNN program Reliable Sources, and was named the nation's best media reporter by American Journalism Review. His articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, George, Talk, New York, and other national magazines. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0684868792
• ISBN 13: 9780684868790
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352