Being an economist is sort of like being a weatherman: No matter how good you are at your job, in the end it's mostly a game of change + some educated guessing. But CNBC, the creme de la creme of business news, managed to completely miss the economic crisis that was about to befall the American people. And by the time they did happen to warn everyone about Bear Sterns, they were seen as complicit in the collapse of the investment giant. So much so that Vanity Fair fingered CNBC as being "trigger-happy" "players" in the lender's fall from grace.

Still, CNBC is not happy about missing their chance to raise the alarm, and network correspondent Charlie Gasparino wants to confess all his sins before he is read his rights:

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'In fact, the current issue of Vanity Fair features a piece on Burnett and CNBC veteran Maria Bartiromo - the “Money Honey” - titled “Who is Wall Street’s Queen B.?” Burnett said the pair is not at odds. “Her schedule is as crazy as mine is,” Burnett said. “In many cases, we’re like ships passing in the night in terms of our schedules, but we have always, always been friendly.”' [Boston Herald, earlier]

Also, remember when the Post's Page Six was calling Bartiromo not "The Money Honey," but "The Bank Skank"? Oh, the summer of 2007 was such a brighter time.

CNBC has a great combo going: Money and chicks. Sure, the ads on the station's website sometimes gets managing editor Allen Wastler into hot water with the provocative bikini-clad women on a site ostensibly about finance, but come on: hearing about the economy tanking all the time can sometimes be sort of dry.

That's why the NBC biz chan banks on two of its stars to get the movers and shakers moving and shaking over to their channel. Maria Bartiromo (on the left) of Closing Bell and Erin Burnett (on the right) of Street Signs are two of the biggest…uh…assets that business station has going for it. Especially now, when there is an inverse relationship between how bad off the country is financially and the ratings for the network.

But given the primadonna nature of the station's leading ladies, it was only a matter of time before the rumored catfight between Maria "The Money Honey" and Erin "Street Sweetie" made its way into the pages of Graydon Carter's baby. Because he likes celebrities, beautiful people, and money.

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If you're wondering why the gift shops at LaGuardia seem a little less snow globe and keychain oriented and a little more hellbent on getting you to watch The O'Reilly Factor, it's not your Murdoch-induced paranoia or the Ambien kicking in preemptively. Brands like USA Today, CNBC and Fox News are outsourcing their brand names to retail shops in airport lounges that exclusively feature items bearing the corporate watermark.

Two possible reasons for the baffling business tactic:

1) The decline in viewership, for both television and glossies, has media corporations looking to expand their names into wholesale businesses as a way to raise revenue and

2) September 11th:

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Exhausted with crapping on MSNBC, News Corp.'s attack dog megaphone Page Six goes after 30 Rock's biz network: 'THE top talents at CNBC are battling over a billboard. A network insider tells us Maria Bartiromo, Suze Orman and Donny Deutsch "all want their pictures on CNBC's billboard overlooking the West Side Highway, and there's always a lot of fighting and lobbying behind the scenes over it. They're like a bunch of prima donnas." A CNBC flack denied any rivalry and insisted all three have had their mugs featured on the board in the last year.'

This is funny, because:

Nielsen, the Big Brother-esque media group that measures television consumption, is currently asking panel members to carry around teeny-tiny audio devices that react to "digital signals of audio media" to measure the amount of television being watched outside the home.

What does this mean for you? Once these numbers come out, Nielsen, which is responsible for all media ratings (when's the last time someone cited TNS' numbers?), will be able to tell you how much television we're sneaking in when away from our living rooms. The hours you waste watching Adult Swim at the office on your MacBook? Suddenly quantifiable!

And of course, you know what network whines all the time about not being able to accurately determine their viewership:

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Allen Wastler, the managing editor of CNBC.com, just got done with a fireside chat about how some guests of the network follow up their interviews by asking them to be pulled from the site's archives. Now Wastler is offering another missive, and this one's of the apologetic variety, as in: Sorry visitors to CNBC.com are met with ads "showing women unbuttoning sweaters and listing mileage to ladies looking for a date. And the others showing come-hither countenances and blaring 'NO CREDIT CARD REQUIRED.'" And it's not just unfortunate contextual advertising that's to blame, but "networks, where inventory is sold off to middlemen who represent a variety of advertisers. You get all sorts of strange ads running through. We had ones for nipple pads once. You wouldn't usually expect that with your bond rates, would you?"

Except, actually, yes:

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Now On NBC: beach volleyball. On MSNBC: fencing. On CNBC: Glorified girdle infomercial Look Thinner Instantly.

Who hasn't done an on-air appearance they've come to regret? At the top, there are presidential candidates like John McCain who wish certain CNN interviews would disappear. Toward the bottom, there are the talking heads cable networks always call upon to weigh in on Topics A, B, and C. Thanks to the magical ways of the Internet, after these live interview air, they're often archived on the network's website for future reference. CNBC certainly follows that practice. Which means it's opened itself up to on-air guests phoning in later to ask that their interview be yanked from the website, perhaps because they said something inaccurate — or perhaps because they didn't like the way they looked that day.

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"Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that FBN averaged 8,000 viewers during daytime programming and 20,000 viewers in primetime in the first three weeks of July. That's a little better than the numbers reported at the start of the year, when the channel was reaching 6,000 viewers during the day and 15,000 in the evening. But at that rate of growth, it will be another 3,588 weeks, or 69 years, before FBN matches CNBC's daytime audience of 284,000. By then, Murdoch will be 146 years old, and on his seventh wife, if current trends hold (and assuming no growth in CNBC's numbers)." [Portfolio]

Though the Fox Business Network has seen a "modest improvement" in its ratings since the channel launched in October — up from an average of 6,000 daytime viewers to 8,000 — it's not exactly a true competitor to CNBC yet. So what makes another upstart think it can take on the business TV king? Chutzpah, money, and a leap of faith. Thomson Reuters appears to have all three.

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Erin Burnett is basically the only competition to Maria Bartiromo for the title of Hottest Chick on Finance TV — if you don't count the Fox Business Network, where, not to insult our friends over there, but their understanding the difference between bull and bear was not the top hiring criteria.

Burnett receives an evergreen write up from Times TV scribe Brian Stelter, who points out that Burnett kinda just came out of nowhere and became an overnight success story. And that it was very calculated from inside CNBC. (This is a very nicely packaged tale. Its backstory might need more re-telling.)

But: Co-anchoring a program within weeks of her arrival? Currently anchoring three hours of live programming a day? How ever did such a woman of so few years (she's 32) get to do all that?

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CNBC has been having a one Howard Glaser on the air to talk about the mortgage meltdown, and how the federal government is stepping in to bank roll Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae so the entire nation's economy doesn't nose dive any farther. CNBC introduced him as a "mortgage industry consultant." CNBC did not introduce him as a paid consultant to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which he is. That type of thing is what some in this biz refer to as a "conflict of interest." (The network says it wasn't aware of the relationship. Glaser says his fee from the big banks doesn't influence his on-air analysis. Right.)

Add to MSNBC's focus today on Hillary Clinton's new hairdo — "they would never talk about a guy's haircut" we imagine someone screaming — and NBC's cable networks are ratcheting up a whole slew of sticking points for the conservative blogs to get their jazz hands on.

"CNBC talk show guy and famed ad man Donny Deutsch managed to get himself surrounded by women less than half his age at the Waverly Inn last night, all in short skirts and high heels," reports Roger Friedman. "It’s good to be king!"

Now, what, exactly, is Friedman's definition of King?

Because last time we checked, nobody was watching Donny's show.

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Even though the brothers of dead hedge fund manager and CNBC talking head Seth Tobias have settled with widow Filomena Tobias and sorted out the future of Tobias' $25 million estate, they refuse to retract allegations that she killed their loved one back in September when he was found drugged up in his pool. "There will be no retraction of the allegations," says their attorney. "I would not say that the Tobiases don't believe that she killed him." And that statement comes after the settlement was reached, which means only one thing: Filomena had a crappy ass attorney. Most settlement agreements like this one include clauses about non-disclosure and non-disparagement, which means neither party can publicly reveal the terms of the settlement nor take the other's good name to the pavement. [Palm Beach Post via NYM]