Is the Financial Media Setting Free the Bears?

(MoneyWatch)  Folks who read finance blogs may well have heard of Peter Schiff, a stockbroker who has gotten a lot of airtime on and off. But when he goes on CNBC, the anchors tend to make fun of him and make him look bad. That's because Schiff is a big bear, when financial pundits (and certainly the financial chat-show hosts) are expected to be bullish come what may.

Since I was one of the first journalists to write about Schiff (although certainly not THE first) and much later became a client of his firm Euro-Pacific Capital -- but also mostly because he tends to make a lot of sense and does not run with the herd -- I have a soft spot for Schiff. But even if I did not, I hope I'd see that his treatment at the hands of outlets like CNBC and Fox Business News has been a travesty.

Schiff essentially called the financial crisis before almost anyone. Here is the item I wrote about him for Forbes. Soon after that item appeared, Schiff became a regular on financial networks, but mostly so the bullish commentators like the buffoonish Larry Kudlow could use him like a piñata.

Suffice it to say that Schiff's views on the dollar and the real estate market have proven correct -- though he does tend to get excited and overstate his points. The odd thing is that once he started looking good, the chat-show bookers stopped calling. His fall from media grace is exemplified by a smackdown in Forbes published in March, which accused him of -- shock! -- using his media profile to attract clients.

More recently, Schiff has been interviewed by Barron's, quoted in the Times Week in Review and appeared on the very mainstream CBS Sunday Morning show. The June 30 Barron's piece is a detailed showcasing of Schiff's view that the U.S. economy is drowning in debt and will, therefore, decline. (Regular doses of Schiff can be had on his firm's website.)

I guess now it's finally OK to be a pessimist on the markets. Does that mean the upswing is near?