One of the worst aspects of working the financial media is that occasionally, about once a year, I must spend a month or so checking out what everyone else is up to.

This immersion also finds me feeling much worse than when I began. Generally, because while the financial world is chock full of highly intelligent people, most of them write as if they quit school in the fourth grade.

But this year, after a solid two months of reading the competition, a far more insidious symptom has cropped up.

I can barely lift my head off the pillow in the morning. I have lost all enthusiasm for finance and the economy… in fact, at a time when most people are obsessed with money and the markets; I find them to be the most trivial things in the world.

Now, I still love stock research. And, if you're lucky enough to be one of my Asia Business & Investing subscribers, you know why that's true. 

But, my newsletter is the extent of the enthusiasm I am able to muster for the financial world.

Man oh man… I am bored… so bored… bored stiff… utterly bored by all of it!

The markets are going nowhere. Stocks are sideways. Bonds are sliding. There's no credit available so risk tolerance has totally dried up – and, after all, it is risk taking that drives the markets.

Yet, the blather of pretentious financial know-it-alls continues to snowball.

The money that finances risk may have vanished, but media outlets that invested tens of million in news-gathering infrastructure still crank out Wall Street's tried and true (tired and true?) party-line… buy-more-stock advice, buy-more-bond advice and gold-is-about-to-explode advice from the same sad cast of predictable, conflict-of-interest rife sources.

These same media outlets can only put a human face on the news when it's a shopper squealing about a discount… a manager crying about lost sales… as if consumerism is actual news.

Oh, and let's not forget about the Madoff affair – a rich guy the media fawned over – but now can't admit it turned a blind eye to his hedge fund.

And, I am blasé about faux news from not-so-well-funded outlets, as well.

You know, those that try to be inflammatory but fail to use even the scantest amount of verifiable facts to backup fake ideas. These outlets could rule the media world if they would just take themselves less seriously – have some real fun with their outrage, instead of peddling it as reality.

Of course, that would involve risk. And, even the fringe has rules to which it must conform.

So, I am bored – so bored I am writing about myself, something you all know I never do.

In fact, I am so freekin' bored I may even resort to watching television.

And, this is not some winter, low-light malaise, either.

This is a bone-deep boredom and I suspect sameness is its root.

Because, when no one is taking chances – when big ideas like starting a company, buying a first home, investing seed capital in startups or rolling out an IPO are stifled because we're suddenly afraid – you have time to look around and notice how similar the world looks.

How from Boston to Toronto to Beijing, the world is a giant strip mall where the middle- and near-middle class strives for the same crappily made stuff that's sold by a legion of indifferent clerks.

The other day, I checked in with a Chinese friend of mine in Beijing to see if he thought the financial crisis has put risk on the wane in China.

His answer was a resounding "no!" In fact, he said, though he's not seeking capital, investors are lined up to grab a piece of his business.

And, he noted that there wasn't a much riskier move than abandoning a family in order to work in a factory a thousands miles from home, as many Chinese still do every year.

Though, he said, "I am not sure about the logic behind going to work in a Guangdong factory just so you can afford to buy the things that you make there."

I laughed my butt off at that observation… the idea of being indentured to yourself.

It was such a fresh, non-conformist perspective I wished for a minute that someone would hire my friend to run the Wall Street Journal, or any other widely ready financial publishing outfit.

Because right now we need less, not more, of the sad conformity as peddled by CNBIBDFOXSTREETBLOOMWATCH.

Yaaaaawn. Because, even when they're shouting they're putting me to sleep.

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