CNBC

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Outside His Area Of Expertise

October 3, 2017 by

Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker was interviewed on CNBC on Monday regarding the mass casualty event in Las Vegas. Swecker was the former number three person in the FBI and was probably called upon by CNBC’s John Harwood because of that.

Listen to what he has to say about suppressors and semiautomatic rifles with ugly cosmetics.

Swecker said that civilians – that’s you and me in his LEO-speak – have no need to own suppressors. He also said fully automatic weapons are illegal and that AR-15s are way too easy to convert to full auto. He wondered “what rational purpose is there for 10 different ‘assault weapons’ (sic) in the hands of one person.”

One must wonder how someone with this level of ignorance rises to the level he did at the FBI. Fully automatic weapons are legal if made before the May 19, 1986 (Hughes Amendment) so long as they are registered under the NFA and the owner paid the tax and underwent the requisite background checks. Furthermore, ARs are not easy to convert to full auto unless you have a machine shop and the proper parts. Bumpfire is still not full auto no matter how fast you can dump a mag.

You also have to wonder where his law enforcement expertise lies. Was he a street guy infiltrating motorcycle gangs and fighting violent crime on the streets?

If his LinkedIn page is any indication, his law enforcement expertise lay in white collar crimes and especially financial and cyber crime. From his LinkedIn page where he lays out his expertise both in the FBI and in his subsequent career.

Experience

 In my field it is unethical to practice outside the area of your competence. Given his entire career is and was devoted to white collar crime, financial irregularities, fraud, and the like, Swecker is outside the area of his competence when talking about firearms and violent crime. If he dealt with terrorism, it was regarding the funding of terrorism and not how to rescue someone being held hostage.

If I were to guess why CNBC called upon Chris Swecker to talk about the events in Las Vegas, it is because they knew of him from his role in investigating and prosecuting financial irregularities and thought they could parlay his old position as No. 3 at the FBI into something newsworthy.  In my opinion, they failed.

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I Can’t Believe CNBC Bought This Nonsense

February 16, 2012 by 3 Comments

Yesterday, Elliot Fineman of the Brady offshoot National Gun Victims (sic) Action Council was interviewed by Melissa Lee of CNBC. The interview centered on his group’s boycott of Starbucks due to their policy of neutrality on gun issues. Fineman said the boycott would be ongoing. Of course, no mention was made of the Valentine’s Day BUYcott by either Fineman or CNBC.

The story was presented in such a way as to give credence to Fineman’s claims that the boycott would impact Starbucks. When  pressed on how it would be determined that his group’s boycott was hurting Starbucks’ bottomline, Fineman said that they were using self-reported data from their supporters on how much they were not spending at Starbucks.

Excuse me but self-reported data from their “followers” is not exactly reliable data from which to make projections. Fineman then says that their Monte Carlo simulations show that 90% of the time their boycott will have “a significant impact on the Starbucks’ stock.” Having used Monte Carlo simulation with retirement planning for years, I understand the results you get are very dependent upon both the constraints and the input data. In other words, if you put garbage in, you will get garbage out and that is exactly what they are getting.

It is very hard to prove a negative unlike a positive. The results from the BUYcott can be shown by an increase in sales for February 14th. However, a decline in sales over time would be hard to attribute to just the boycott by Fineman’s group. There are many other factors like the state of the economy and competitors (like McDonalds) which come into play which are much more significant.

Fineman goes on to say that institutional investors who own 357 million shares of Starbucks’ stock should be able to make their own decision based upon his studies. However, they don’t plan to go to the institutional investors to pressure them to pressure Starbucks.

If Fineman is so confident in his projections, then he should have no problem presenting them to investors nor have a problem with pressuring these same institutional investors. I would speculate the reason he won’t be “pressuring” the institutional investors is because he knows he would be laughed out of the room.