Well, as the recent recession has taken a chunk out of my retirement account, I thought I would try watching CBNC occasionally for a few months so that I could be enlightened as to the Wall Street goings-on. I was surprised by what I found. It turns out that the stock market is not covered by sober and dry Anglophiles, and still less by "the smartest people in the room," as someone once called the Enron execs, but by a bunch of drug-addled, self-contradictory misfits who speak and act like rabbits on crack. I can't imagine where CNBC found some of their anchors: they couldn't have been happy in their journalism schools, if they attended them; they must have been real misfits, wherever they were trained. If they fit anywhere, it's in a stereotypical version of the 1980s, as depicted in the film Wall Street. At least Jim Cramer, with his law degree, has an oddly endearing insanity reminiscent of Dick Vitale, even if his stock picks are ridiculously self-fulfilling prophecies. But, with that exception, every person on CNBC is insane in rather unappealing and seedy ways. There's the extreme right-winger Larry Kudlow, who used to be a cokehead and still dresses like one, or at least like Gordon Gekko. There's Seth Tobias, the guy found dead in a swimming pool last year with a gay porn star. I am sure that people who watch this channel more often have other names of nutcases they could mention. Many of these people should probably be in a straightjacket or behind bars. The best of the bunch might be saved for Celebrity Rehab.