When tuning in to financial shows, let the viewer beware

For investors, more than half of the financial crisis survival test involves sorting out the valid analysis from the rhetoric. For example, most investors by now know how to avoid overt financial propaganda.

Conservative commentator Sean Hannity's show on the Fox News Cable Network is a classic example. Tune in any weeknight and you're likely to hear the latest negative spin on any financial or economic data point or development, simply because Barack Obama, a Democrat, is now U.S. president: Are credit markets starting to loosen? Well, they would have loosened quicker had the federal government simply left the markets alone.