Maria Bartiromo is more than just a pretty face who takes ethically questionable rides on corporate jets. In fact, some argue that her role at CNBC has changed the way analyst information is disseminated, which might actually be making for smarter individual investors. Also, her hot lips make for easier listening to this crap.

In the old days — that would be ten years ago, or so — people would jump on information from a sell-side analyst. The rating change would (somehow) get to the clients paying the largest commissions and then to the sales force, and finally to the customers of the Big-Name firm. Presumably the institutions doing massive trading would hear the news early, so one can guess where the individual investor ranked.

Maria Bartiromo changed this system and changed the rules for information dissemination. Through a lot of hard work, she started to reveal these rating changes in her CNBC segments from the NYSE floor before the market opened. No one had ever done this before, and she was subjected to a lot of "hazing".

Once she got the information going, the firms involved realized that this was a story that could not be bottled up. Eventually, they all joined in. Everything that people now expect to see, all of the news about upgrades and downgrades on web sites and TV — none of this happened before Maria. Much of the openness of information, the coverage from the NYSE floor, and a lot of full disclosure has come through her pioneering efforts.