We’ve long maintained here at Deep Capture that Charlie Gasparino is possibly the most insightful figure at CNBC.
Today, Mr. Gasparino underscored that status while on air with Joe Grano, former CEO at UBS Financial Services and an early predictor of the current financial crisis. Grano’s interview was set to coincide with the upcoming first anniversary of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers — commonly recognized as the event that sparked the meltdown — and attempted to answer the question, “what have we learned?”
Along the way, the following exchange took place:
Co-Host: …doesn’t that eliminate a lot of the need for all this call for legislation?
Grano: A good part of it. And as long as you limit to a degree some of the leverage. I don’t believe in naked shorts, I don’t believe in naked credit default swaps when there’s really not a counterparty there because all you’re doing is levering into the sky. We don’t need that and it has nothing to do with our…
Gasparino: Patrick Byrne was right, all along…the Overstock guy…that everybody made fun of and then every Wall Street CEO mimics him right now.
Grano: In length of speculative excess there’s no question.
For taking a position that is undoubtedly very unpopular at CNBC, the Deep Capture team salutes Charlie Gasparino.