Fighting back

Loudmouth Rick Santelli, whose 2009 rant supposedly inspired the Tea Party, is finally taken to task for being completely wrong about... well, everything in recent years.

Rick Santelli, the CNBC personality who's been credited with giving rise to the tea party movement, was told on-air Monday that he's been wrong about pretty much everything.

The always-wired Santelli, reporting from his perch on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, was fired up as usual, fulminating about how the Federal Reserve is behind the curve on inflation.

When Santelli asserted that he was right on the issue all along, he drew applause from some Chicago traders.

Enter fellow CNBC analyst Steve Liesman, who proceeded to list off Santelli's litany of errant forecasts.

It's impossible for you to have been more wrong, Rick. Your call for inflation, the destruction of the dollar, the failure of the US economy to rebound. Rick, it’s impossible for you to have been more wrong. Every single bit of advice you gave would have lost people money, Rick. Lost people money, Rick. Every single bit of advice. There is no piece of advice that you've given that's worked, Rick. There is no piece of advice that you've given that's worked, Rick. Not a single one. Not a single one, Rick. The higher interest rates never came, the inability of the U.S. to sell bonds never happened, the dollar never crashed, Rick. There isn’t a single one that’s worked for you.

All the while, Santelli continued to shout over Liesman.

This was two weeks ago, but I really wanted to blog about it, because I pay attention to such things.This was, and is, very important to me.

I retired early, so I live on my investments. At the end of the Bush administration, as right-wing Republicans proved to be wrong about everything they'd promised us, my net worth had dropped to half of what it had been.

As Barack Obama took office, Santelli and other right-wing pundits continued to give bad advice. I remember hearing that rant. I'd heard similar stuff from others who'd been wrong throughout the Bush years. Indeed, I've been hearing it since then, too - for five years now.

Well, I did the exact opposite of what Santelli's words advised. I figured that they couldn't have been more wrong in recent years - leading to the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression - so it wasn't at all likely they'd suddenly get it right this time. (I had, in fact, been taking money out of the market before the crash - though not nearly enough - because of how wrong they'd already been.)

I'm not kidding, that was the best investment move I've ever made in my life! Ignoring their warnings, I scraped together every bit of cash I could and bought stock investments. Sure enough, Santelli's rant marked the market bottom. (His remarks were broadcast in late February, while the market stopped crashing and starting turning up in early March.)

Ever since then, I've been hearing similar rants from right-wingers, and they've also been wrong. (They're consistent, you've got to give them that - consistently wrong.) The stock market - a leading economic indicator - has been booming, with the economy picking up as well, despite universal foot-dragging by Republican politicians.

Rick Santelli still has his soapbox, of course. Being wrong - consistently, demonstrably, astoundingly wrong about pretty much everything - seems to matter not at all to political pundits and television personalities.

Santelli still has his job, and he's still yelling. In fact, he continued to yell all the time that Steve Liesman was pointing out - accurately - how wrong he'd been. Well, no surprise there, huh?

But at least someone has said it - someone on his own network, in fact. I've got to give Liesman a lot of credit for that.

Yet,... note that the traders in the background applauded Santelli. Yes, he'd been wrong about everything. If they'd followed his advice, they'd have lost money - bigtime. But who cares about that, right? Having faith in your dogma is all that matters in the right-wing.

I do feel good, though, when at least someone recognizes how wrong these people have been. We need to keep pointing that out. If might never get through to the Santellis of this world, but maybe the American people will start paying attention, not just to the rants, but to the results.