Rick Santelli

On March 5, 2020, Santelli made headlines for stating, after a series of stock declines driven by fears of a COVID-19 virus pandemic, that "maybe we’d be just better off if we gave [the virus] to everybody, and then in a month it would be over because the mortality rate of [COVID-19] probably isn’t going to be any different if we did it that way than [in] the long-term picture, but the difference is we’re wreaking havoc on global and domestic economies." This analysis was viewed as especially uninformed and dangerous, as a key concern at the time was that a concentrated outbreak - the exact event Santelli was suggesting society should embrace - would lead to an overwhelmed medical system and greatly increase the number of deaths from the virus due to the number of patients needing care exceeding the availability of medical assistance.

Since 2015, Santelli has lived with his wife in Wayne, Illinois.

The grandson of four Italian immigrants, Rick John Santelli was born near Taylor Street in Chicago's old Italian neighborhood and moved with his family to Lombard, Illinois at age six. After graduating from Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, Illinois, Santelli attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was a member of the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in economics in 1979.

I think that this tea party phenomenon is steeped in American culture and steeped in the American notion to get involved with what's going on with our government. I haven't organized. I'm going to have to work to pay my taxes, so I'm not going to be able to get away today. But, I have to tell you – I'm pretty proud of this.

Santelli drew attention for his remarks made on February 19, 2009, about the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, which was announced on February 18. While broadcasting from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Santelli accused the government of "promoting bad behavior", and raised the possibility of a "Chicago Tea Party". He suggested that individuals who knowingly obtained high-risk mortgages (and faced impending foreclosure as a consequence) were "losers". The Tea Party remark was credited by some as "igniting" the Tea Party movement as a national phenomenon.

On April 20, 2009, Santelli participated as a panel member in an Economic Leadership Forum hosted by the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation at Texas A&M University.

In the 1990s, Santelli felt that the financial industry was changing in a way "not beneficial to me and my family", and accepted a full-time job with CNBC in 1999.

In 1979, he joined the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade as a commodity trader and order filler for Drexel Burnham Lambert; he eventually became the Vice President of Interest Rate Futures and Options.

CNN.com reported that some compared Santelli to fictional reporter Howard Beale, the protagonist of the 1976 satirical film Network. Santelli said:

Rick John Santelli (born July 6, 1956) is an editor for the CNBC Business News network. He joined CNBC as an on-air editor on June 14, 1999, reporting primarily from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. He was formerly the vice president for an institutional trading and hedge fund account for futures-related products. He is also credited as being a catalyst in the early formation of the Tea Party movement via a statement he made on February 19, 2009.