Rick Santelli

Rick Santelli is an on-air editor for CNBC, reporting from the Chicago futures exchange floor. He is best known outside financial television for a live segment broadcast on 19 February 2009, in which he criticized a federal mortgage relief plan announced the previous day and called for a “Chicago Tea Party.”

Career

Santelli began working in the Chicago futures markets in 1979 as a trader and order-filler at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, in markets including gold, lumber, certificates of deposit, Treasury bills, foreign currencies and livestock. He subsequently held positions at Drexel Burnham Lambert, where he was a vice president in charge of interest rate futures and options at the Chicago Board of Trade; at the Derivative Products Group of Geldermann Inc., as managing director; at Rand Financial Services Inc., as vice president of institutional futures and options; and at Sanwa Futures, L.L.C., as a vice president handling institutional trading and hedge accounts.

He joined CNBC as an on-air editor in June 1999, reporting live from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, with a beat covering interest rates, foreign exchange and the Federal Reserve. His employer’s biography lists him as a regular contributor to “Squawk on the Street.” He holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana and has been a member of both the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.

The Plan He Was Reacting To

On 18 February 2009, at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona, President Obama announced the administration’s housing plan. The Treasury Department’s summary the same day, issued as press release tg-33, named it the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan. It had three components: refinancing for up to 4 to 5 million homeowners with loans owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac; a $75 billion Homeowner Stability Initiative aimed at up to 3 to 4 million at-risk homeowners; and support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to which Treasury committed up to$200 billion in capital. Treasury said the plan would help up to 7 to 9 million families restructure or refinance, against a backdrop of nearly 6 million households then facing possible foreclosure.

The 19 February 2009 Broadcast

CNBC’s video page for the segment carries a publication timestamp of 8:11 a.m. Eastern on 19 February 2009. CNBC’s later account identifies the programme as “Squawk Box.” In the segment, Santelli argued that the plan subsidized borrowers who had bought more house than they could afford, turned to the traders working around him and asked whether they wanted to pay their neighbours’ mortgages, and drew an audible chorus of “no.” He suggested that he and others in Chicago were planning a “tea party” that summer, and closed by asking the camera, “President Obama, are you listening?”

One line from the broadcast is preserved verbatim in the Congressional Record. Speaking in the House on 17 March 2009, Rep. Tom McClintock of California quoted Santelli asking: “How many of you want to pay your neighbor’s mortgage who has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”

CNBC’s own records disagree on the trading floor. The network’s video page places the segment on “the floor of the CME Group”; an article CNBC published the following day places it “on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade.” CME Group had acquired the Chicago Board of Trade in 2007, so both descriptions can refer to the same company, but this page does not resolve which pit he was standing in. Traders named in CNBC’s own descriptions of the clip include Jason Roney of Sharmac Capital and Eric “The Wolfman” Wilkinson.

Reaction

CNBC published a round-up of responses the next day, 20 February 2009. At the White House press briefing that same day, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about anger over the foreclosure plan and answered at length about Santelli: “I’ve watched Mr. Santelli on cable the past 24 hours or so. I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives, or in what house he lives, but the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgage, stay in their job, pay their bills, to send their kids to school.” Gibbs said Santelli “has argued, I think quite wrongly, that this plan won’t help everyone,” and noted that a home near a foreclosed one had likely lost about 9 percent of its value, roughly $20,000 for an average home.

Relationship to the Tea Party Movement

The claim that the broadcast created the Tea Party movement is widely made, including by CNBC itself, whose 2015 repost of the clip describes it as “Thought to be the moment the Tea Party was created.” The peer-reviewed treatment is narrower. Madestam, Shoag, Veuger and Yanagizawa-Drott, writing in The Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2013, describe Santelli as having delivered “a televised and rapidly popularized attack on the U.S. government’s plans to refinance mortgages” in which he “called for a ‘Chicago Tea Party,’” and credit him with inspiring “several, relatively small, local protests in February 2009.” They date the movement’s national emergence to the coordinated Tax Day rallies of 15 April 2009 — an estimated 440,000 to 810,000 people at more than 500 rallies — which they call “the true starting point of the national Tea Party movement.”

What Is Not Established Here

This page previously carried the stub flag, no sources, and the assertion that the segment was delivered “on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor.” CNBC’s own two accounts of the segment disagree on the floor, so the page now states the disagreement instead of picking one.

Removed or withheld for want of a source meeting this project’s standard: any birth year or birth date; any follower count; any characterization of Santelli’s own political views or affiliation, which he has not been quoted here as stating; the framing that the broadcast “launched” or “created” the Tea Party as a matter of fact rather than as a characterization made by CNBC and by others; and any claim about his role in organizing, funding or appearing at Tea Party events after February 2009. The full verbatim text of the broadcast is not reproduced: no transcript from a source meeting this pass’s standard could be obtained, and only the single line preserved in the Congressional Record is quoted directly. Lines widely attributed to Robert Gibbs at the 20 February 2009 briefing — including an offer to buy Santelli “a cup of coffee — decaf” — could not be confirmed in position within the official transcript and are not quoted.