OH BRIT

James Wolcott on Brit Hume's reaction to the London bombings:

Always looking for the silver lining in a choking cloud of smoke, that great humanitarian Brit Hume, reflecting on the financial ramfications of the attacks, said on Fox News that when he woke up and saw how steep the stock futures had dropped, he thought, "Hmm, time to buy."*

And yes, he actually said, "Hmm," as if he had been thoughtfully stroking his chin as he watched those numbers drop. As bodies were being borne into ambulances, Brit was considering what a keen opportunity this was to place a buy order.

Leaving aside what this says about his cold-fish character, it's not even an intelligent investment response. It's one of those contrarian go-against-the-crowd moves that's so obvious that the crowd itself figures it out and nullifies any contrarian advantage. It's like when someone gets the bright idea, "Since everyone is going to be leaving town for the long weekend on Friday morning, I'll leave late Thursday night to get a jump on traffic." Only to find out that a couple hundred thousand commuters had the same bright idea and there you are stuck on the Van Wyck at 2 AM.