A live TV market-floor tirade birthed the Tea Party populist movement

Evidence

Although, many consider another incident as preamble to this spectacular alliance: when Rick Santelli, CNBC’s market reporter, delivered his infamous 2009 Tea Party rant—­a theatrical outburst of populist anger against Barack Obama’s multibillion-­dollar economic stimulus on live television. Surrounded by cheering traders inside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s pit, Santelli protested “subsidiz[ing] the losers’ mortgages” instead of rewarding “the people that could carry the water instead of drink the water… . This is America … the silent majority” (pointing to the traders behind him) and completed his tirade with the proclamation “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party.” — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 675

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the trading pit as theater - how financial spectacle manufactures political performance, connecting markets directly to populism.
• XREF: Relates to speculation reshaping social imagination - the trading floor as origin point of a national political movement. — connects to: A trading-floor rant launched the Tea Party populist movement. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 478

Broader Connections

• A trading-floor rant launched the Tea Party populist movement. #corroborates (1.00) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 478