• Time, Friday, March 13, 2009 9:33 AM

As the economy nosedives, CNBC--the TV darling of the turn-of-the-century stock boom--is proudly letting emotion overcome it. To watch CNBC today is to enter a universe where élites are populists, Wall Street is Main Street and bank executives are the oppressed. It has increasingly pinned the state of the economy not on Wall Street, but on the two-month-old Administration, including recommendations to "Obama-proof your portfolio."

In a way, CNBC has no choice but to become political, since the economy itself has. It is as if--between MSNBC and CNBC--NBC News were trying to own both the liberal and conservative voices of cable news.

But CNBC's is a different strain of conservatism from Bill O'Reilly's: it is urban, club room and Mammon-oriented rather than small town, VFW hall and God-oriented. And ratings are up. There's still a small, demographically appealing niche for talking heads fulminating against the "demonization" of business and being in favor of laissez-faire government.

Read the whole story at Time »