Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett Just Need to Ask Their Guests One Question

These days the financial airwaves are full of guests or talking heads trying to push their own credentials by stating that the 60% run-up that our financial markets have seen over the last five months are justified by growth in China, and that we can just ignore the real problems that we have in our country (10% unemployment, a collapsing real estate market, etc.) because China will pull us much higher.

I’ve been reading a lot of commentary and speaking with a lot of economists who spend a lot of time in China. Invariably, these folks have stated that Chinese official growth numbers are a fiction and their economy is still a fraction the size of the US economy. They further that while the Chinese are stockpiling commodities, they are neither producing nor exporting. The Chinese face real problems, they further, within the next several months as all of the government’s stimulus initiatives expire.

When I measure the reality against what I hear on CNBC, I start to wonder if many of these talking heads on Wall Street aren’t just trying to explain a rise in the market fort which they have no explanation, and to appear to have called it all along. Then I recognize that much of these folks are the same folks who have told us within the last decade that technology growth would move to a great exponent within a matter of months or that the housing boom would never end.

Unlike then, however, their credentials can be easily verified now.

As soon as the market pundits start to speak about China, Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett just need to ask “Have you ever been there?”

I can guarantee you that 9 times out of 10, the answer will be “No.”