And we're listening to him because...

After quoting a Robert L. Rodriguez at length as the bearish counterpoint to the now-bullish Doug Kass, this column rather undermines his credibility here:

The Capital fund that Mr. Rodriguez manages for First Pacific, which is slightly lower for the year and down 42 percent since last March, is now making heavy bets on energy companies.

So on one hand you can listen to Doug Kass, who was considered the most prominent bear going into the collapse, or on the other you can listen to a guy who took it on the chin at least as badly as the S&P over the past year. And if he's down 42% since last March, he's probably down a lot more than that since YE07, given how horrendous the first three months of 2008 were.

This isn't to say that Mr. Rodriguez is especially bad at his job or is wrong that there's a lot more downside left, only that it's not clear why they couldn't find a bear they could quote who had been a little less wrong recently.

h/t Ritholtz