Rick Santelli Launches Another Tea Party on CNBC

Rick Santelli, the CNBC bond expert stationed in Chicago, is as far as most of us purists are concerned the person who started the tea party idea back in 2009 when the American economy was on its way into the disaster zone.
One morning he simply exploded on the TV screen, enraged at the bailouts and shouting down anyone who tried to disagree. His point was that bailouts are not good economics, that they create false market signals, and that at least in the United States, Americans do not pay taxes without having had a vote on the matter. He then asked why we don’t start a few modern tea parties to protest the misuse of our tax dollars.
His explosive attack was so ferocious that he was actually invited to the White House to meet President Obama and his economic team and discuss the matter. Rick, if I recall correctly, refused the invitation. But, his legend was made.
Well, since then he has been much more calm and has really tried to explain the insanities of current economic and fiscal leadership without yelling and turning red in the face.
Until this morning.
He was part of a segment about what’s going on in Spain and how it affects the American stock and bond markets.
Bond giant Pimco’s Neel Kashkari noted that Spain was in a mess and that a bailout would happen even if it takes a few months and even if it drives down the Euro and further harms the already-fragile European economy, and then added that in America the right thing to do would be to solve the “fiscal cliff” problem by simply extending the tax cuts and forgetting about spending cuts which cannot be agreed upon. Rick Santelli went, to put it mildly, ballistic.
The other CNBC analysts, Becky Quick and Steve Liesman, had no luck in quieting Santelli down. The guest host for the hour, the respected Andrew Ross Sorkin, simply faded into the woodwork to avoid having his eyebrows scorched by Santelli’s flame throwing attack.
Santelli's point?
How could anyone say that more government bailouts without matching spending cuts was bad for Europe but good for America. Kashkari had no answer but Rick would not let him get away.
I suspect the real Pimco bosses, either Bill Gross or Mohamed el-Erian, will soon be on the show to put things straight and save what’s left of their stuffed and roasted staff member.
Before Becky Quick pulled the plug on the session, Rick Santelli thundered into the TV camera that America is already over the fiscal cliff and that without spending cuts, no congressperson should vote for an extension of tax cuts. That combination, he shouted, red-faced, might save the United States, but even that is no longer sure.
He was majestic. He was right.