The Maven: Clowns on Parade

Editor's Note: Welcome to 'The Business Press Maven,' the alter ego of Marek Fuchs. With humor and a unique eye for the interplay between Wall Street and the press, The Business Press Maven's column seeks to help investors make money (or avoid losing it) by better understanding what they read, hear and watch.

Investors, if you take only one thing the Business Press Maven says as gospel, let it be this: Daily journalism is not long-form thought. If reporters only have one day to chew on a breaking issue -- while they also answer love letters from readers and assure Mom that they wore their scarf -- what even the best of them write should be read with a critical eye. But as news cycles shorten, there is even less brainpower used, and that leaves investors at the mercy of quickly formed conventional wisdoms.

Like the one about how everything is fine now in the market because of a groovy Fed meeting. The Business Press Maven was going to offer to do a fandango on the desk of the first reporter who wrote otherwise in a fun way. Then I read Gene Epstein's Economic Beat column in the Jan. 9 Barron's and knew I found my man (and desk).

Mr. Epstein opened with a joke involving a tuna fish can and then went on to cast aspersions on what started as a news alert and became a quick article of faith among reporters and then investors -- that minutes from a Federal Open Market Committee meeting gave something close to a guarantee that interest rates would hold here.

Nonsense, said Mr. Epstein, who noted that Ben Bernanke, the not-yet Fed Chairman, was not in the house during the meeting. And the new Fed Chairman, posits Epstein, ain't a hold-it-where-it-is guy. In sum: Epstein says the fed funds rate, now at 4.25%, will hit 5% by summer.

After complimenting Epstein, the Business Press Maven needs to go back to the familiar territory of mournful sighs.

News Alert: News Alerts Stink!

The conventional coverage of the FOMC minutes is emblematic of the groupthink (or thinklessness) that often grips the financial media, especially as reporting time becomes increasingly replaced by constant deadlines.