Steve Liesman Is A Mensch

Unlike some of the others you see on TV, Steve Liesman, the economist-in-chief at CNBC, is an excellent reporter (Full disclosure: I know Steve and for years have had the opportunity to talk with him in front of and behind the camera).

Steve defines his job as getting it right and informing in an enterrtaining way what's happening. That's why anyone who watches CNBC has seen so much of him in recent months. The credit crunch, talk of recession, Fed response, etc. have all both been in his sweet spot and have been so complicated that he absolutely has been the best one to take the lead.

This morning, Steve did something few on TV ever dare to do: he admitted that the situation is so hard to figure out that we can't really be sure what's happening. But he did it in the typical Liesman style by using a left brain/right brain analogy to describe the hard-to-explain competing messages of the credit crunch and relatively strong consumer spending.

The point wasn't to pick one and say it was the dominant force in the U.S. economy right now; Liesman was reporting on the difficulty Wall Street and the economics profession are having figuring out what is really happening now. His bottom line message...that we don't really know what's happening and more suprises are likely ahead...is the type of story that few are willing to report, and for which Liesman deserves a great deal of credit.