Michelle Caruso-Cabrera

CNBC Baffled by Communist Logic in Greece
By Joseph Rossell | June 30, 2015 | 2:05 PM EDT

Yes, there are still communists in Greece, and many support the possible Greek exit (or “Grexit”) from the eurozone.

CNBC’s chief international correspondent Michelle Caruso-Cabrera said on June 30 she “found it hard to believe” there were still communists in Greece, then played an interview with one of “many” communist protesters at an anti-euro rally. She challenged the protester to explain why he thought communism would “work now,” given its failure in countries like the USSR and Cuba. He responded by blaming the communist “bureaucratic elite” for taking power “back from the people.”

CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera Schools Morning Joe Panel On Potential Government Default
By Paul Bremmer | October 4, 2013 | 6:01 PM EDT

The Morning Joe crew, along with much of the liberal media, has lately been ringing the debt-ceiling alarm, saying that a failure to raise the debt ceiling by October 17 would cause a default that would devastate the U.S. economy. But on Friday’s Morning Joe, CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera stepped onto the set and took a wrecking ball to the wall of hysteria surrounding a possible default.

With the air of an economics professor, Caruso-Cabrera educated the other panelists, attempting to set right their erroneous impressions: [See video below.]

CNBC Host Tells MSNBC Viewers ‘Jay Carney's Been Fear Mongering on Your Network’
By Noel Sheppard | October 1, 2013 | 11:32 AM EDT

White House press secretary Jay Carney appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Tuesday expressing the typical doom and gloom about what the government shutdown means to Americans and the economy.

After he was done, CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera told the MJ crew about how the markets were shrugging off the shutdown due to its likely limited impact on the economy and punctuated her thoughts by saying, “Jay Carney’s been fear mongering on your network” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Maher Bets $1 Million 'Token Black Guy' Cain Loses GOP Nod, GOPers Want White Candidate
By Brad Wilmouth | October 15, 2011 | 5:03 AM EDT

During the monologue of Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, host Maher referred to GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain as a "token black guy" as he asserted that establishment Republicans are "freaking out" because they never expected him to be competitive.

Alluding to the tendency of guest characters in Star Trek television episodes to be killed off, he cracked:

CNBC's Santelli Schools NYT's Friedman in Ponzi Schemes and Social Security
By Noel Sheppard | September 8, 2011 | 4:17 PM EDT

The question of whether or not Social Security is a Ponzi scheme moved from Wednesday's Republican presidential debate to the set of CNBC Thursday.

In a heated debate, CNBC's Rick Santelli and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman argued the issue with them ending up calling each other "idiotic" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNBC's Caruso-Cabrera Blames Govt Spending for Europe's Economic Problems
By Brad Wilmouth | September 5, 2011 | 9:07 PM EDT

Appearing on Monday's NBC Nightly News, CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera blamed decades of overspending by European governments and borrowing to help provide promised benefits for the continent's current economic problems.

She said "a lot of governments in Europe for many decades now have borrowed a lot of money in order to give very generous benefits to their workers and their retirees. They thought that they would grow enough to generate enough revenue to pay back those debts. That hasn't happened."

Bill Maher Smacks Down Tavis Smiley: 'When You Tolerate Intolerance You're Not Really Being A Liberal'
By Noel Sheppard | February 19, 2011 | 10:21 AM EST

Bill Maher and Tavis Smiley got into a heated debate Friday about the difference between the treatment of women in America versus in Muslim countries.

When Smiley continually asserted on HBO's "Real Time" that women are maltreated here, Maher said, "It's such bulls--t," and eventually ended the discussion by scolding the PBS host, "When you tolerate intolerance, you’re not really being a liberal” (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

CNBC Anchor: Hugo Chávez is 'Funny,' 'Charming,' 'A Seductor,' but 'Dangerous'
By Jeff Poor | October 7, 2010 | 4:21 PM EDT

What is it with Hollywood personalities going to Venezuela and being swept off their feet by the thuggish dictator Hugo Chávez. They come back with these stories claiming he is just misconstrued by the media and that he’s really a great guy.

On Oct. 7, at an appearance at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. promoting her book “You Know I'm Right: More Prosperity, Less Government,” the proudly libertarian co-host of CNBC's “Power Lunch” Michelle Caruso-Cabrera explained how this could happen. She told an audience that Chávez has a very charismatic, yet seductive personality.

“I was telling – my two most interesting interviews I think I’ve ever done are Milton Friedman, very influential on me, and also Hugo Chávez, because when I interviewed him I was struck by how much I like him,” she explained. “He’s very funny. He is so charming. He is smooth. He could be a stand-up comedian. He is a seductor, as I suspect most dictators are – that’s how they get to where they are.”

Arianna's Moment of Clarity: TARP Bailout Profitability Claim 'Economically' Flawed
By Jeff Poor | October 5, 2010 | 11:35 AM EDT

So more government isn’t the answer to all of our problems? For a brief moment, that seemed to be the message Huffington Post editor-in-chief and co-founder Arianna Huffington was conveying. 

On CNBC’s Oct. 5 broadcast of “Squawk Box,” Huffington, author of “Third World America” explained what she thought the role of government should be in an American economic system. Now whether she was playing to the CNBC pro-capitalist audience or not remains to be seen, but she did depart with the so-called progressive/liberal view of government’s role in the economy, and criticized the Obama administration.

“[S]o when it comes to the Obama administration’s policies, the problem has been rewarding people for taking excessive risks, which is not at the heart of capitalism,” Huffington said. “You and I have talked about that before. At the heart of capitalism is the assumption that if you take excessive risks and you fail, you’re on your own. The taxpayer is not on the hook. And we still have left the systemic risk in the system despite the financial reform bill that was passed. ‘Too big to fail’ has not ended and that really is the potential problem in the future.”

CNBC's Kernen Challenges Pa. Governor on Tea Party 'Fruit Loops' Label and Pass Given to MSNBC's Schultz
By Jeff Poor | September 29, 2010 | 3:01 PM EDT

As we near the midterm elections, left-wingers will be reading from the same tired playbook – the attempted marginalization of the Tea Party movement, but just more of it. But more and more, they are discovering the tactics are tougher to defend, as their side has their own fringe, loose-cannon elements.

On CNBC’s Sept. 29 “Squawk Box,” hosts Joe Kernen and Michelle Caruso-Cabrera went after Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell for what seems to be hypocrisy – a willingness to attack one side for extremism, while ignoring extreme elements on the left. Rendell was asked by Kernen to elaborate on remarks he made earlier this month, that some Republicans are “fruit loops,” “whackos,” and “flat-out crazy.”

KERNEN: I want to talk to you about something, later about -- you're calling Tea Party people wing nuts and fruit loops?
RENDELL: Not all of them.
KERNEN: Not all of them? You saw the president, the president basically said that most of them, most of the Tea Party “are directed and financed by powerful and special interests lobbies,” this is in the Journal today. That's most of them and the rest of them are bigots. So you're either directed by special interests …
RENDELL: I don't believe it.
KERNEN: Seventy-one percent of Republicans, according to this poll today in the Journal identify – so, you've just trashed the entire half of the country.
CARUSO-CABRERA: He says slowly but surely, the GOP is taken over by whackos.
RENDELL: There’s no question about that.

NY Times Op-Ed Writer's Muddled Logic: Money Not Paid in Taxes a Gift from Government
By Jeff Poor | September 27, 2010 | 4:04 PM EDT

It’s a really skewed view of the relationship between citizens and the government – that anything you earn and get to keep by not paying to the government in the form of taxes is a show of benevolence from the government.

But that’s apparently the view of Richard H. Thaler, professor at the University of Chicago. In the Sept. 26 New York Times, Thaler, declares that tax cuts are a gift in his op-ed “What the Rich Don’t Need.”

“WANT to give affluent households a present worth $700 billion over the next decade?” Thaler wrote. “In a period of high unemployment and fiscal austerity, this idea may seem laughable. Amazingly, though, it is getting traction in Washington. I am referring, of course, to the current debate about whether to extend all, or just some, of the tax cuts of President George W. Bush – cuts that are due to expire at year-end. They’re expiring because the only way they could be enacted initially was by pretending that they were temporary.”

Video Below Fold

Peter Schiff -- Purveyor of Libertarian Principles ... When Convenient
By Jeff Poor | September 26, 2010 | 12:46 PM EDT

For the past several years, we’ve heard the doom-and-gloom prognostications coming from perma-bear Peter Schiff: The Federal Reserve is the root of all evil. Inflation will be the United States’ undoing. Invest in gold and overseas because the American stock market is toast.

Perhaps that’s a legitimate view, but Schiff argues a more libertarian approach to prevent these supposed calamities. He argues for a different way of handling monetary policy, less spending by the federal government and a rethinking of how regulation is handled. Yet, when a political campaign is waged in the halls of Congress by a partisan member against one of his competitors, he turns a blind-eye to the abuses of government power.

“You know, I have my own gold company and it bothers me what they're going to do,” Schiff said to CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report” fill-in host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera on the Sept. 24 broadcast. “I think that companies like, you know, like Goldline, you know that are basically marking up their gold coins 67 percent or whatever – it's outrageous. I mean, most companies mark-up 2 or 3 percent, which is what I do. These type of companies give the whole industry a bad name. What I’m afraid of is we're going to have a lot of regulation.”