Anyone wanting to contact the Squawk Box boys can get them at this address: Info@CNBC.com I'm guessing that they may view Herb in the same way we do: a worm in the shorts' pocket. They might just want to look into the Greenberg/Rocker/MPEG Assoc. axis.
Pardon this irrelevant digression, but I think I've got Herb's motive figured out. Basically he is a very insecure guy who never got picked to be on anyone's team when he was a kid. He's always thought very highly of himself, but nobody else ever thought he was important. And so that is now the most important thing in his life, his quest, so to speak. I don't think he needs money, or anything for that matter, nearly as much as he needs for people to think of him as the savvy insider.
Because of this, he is too blind to recognize that the Rocker boys act like they're his friends and treat him as if he really knows something about investment just so that Herb will do their bidding in his column. Maybe I suffer from an overactive imagination, but I'm guessing that they do lunch with Herb, maybe play a little golf or racquetball together, you know, treat him like one of the boys. (Herb's told me in an email that he goes "dutch" when he does lunch with those who have an interest in a stock's movement which is probably true.)
Now add to this scenario the fact that Alex B. has never returned Herb's phone calls, let alone responded to his invitation to dispute the shorts in Herb's business insider column and you begin to get some justification for Herb's vitriolic attacks on CUBE. Herb probably equates Alex with all of the bigger, better boys of his youth who passed him over time and time again. (I think they call this sublimation, but psych 101 was a long time ago)
And so Herbie has two reasons to slam CUBE: To punish those boys from his past and to repay his buddies at Rocker for treating him like he's really on the team.
I think if we all chip in and pay for some psychoanalysis for Herb, we may be able distract him from cube... and begin to like himself again.
What do you say?
carl |
