Blame Game

From the chatter on CNBC this morning, it seems like Ben Bernanke is getting most of the heat for not being as press-savvy or as “street smart” as his predecessor. This is nonsense. Ben can–and certainly will–improve in this area as time goes on.

Whispering things in Maria Bartiromo’s ear at a press dinner may not be the best media strategy, but Mr. Bernanke is as free as anyone in this country to speak his mind whenever and wherever he chooses.

Once the beans have been spilled, however, it becomes the journalist’s responsibility to get that news out as fast as possible, even if it happens over the weekend.

The disturbing problem here is that CNBC had a piece of market-moving information in their possesion on Saturday night, but chose to deliver it out of the clear blue sky late Monday afternoon.

I don’t know what happened in the meantime, but I do know that nobody outside of the relatively small financial blogging community seems to be asking this question. That’s troublesome.