'Good evening. This is Wall Street Week. I'm Louis Rukeyser. Welcome back.'

In addition to a fair, accurate, succinct summary of the week's events, Rukeyser recruited some of Wall Street's and the financial community's most respected analysts and economists to appear as regular panelists. Further, the question/answer sessions and discussions Rukeyser and his panelists had with that week's guest expert were informed, smart, incisive, relevant, and utilitarian: there was no sensationalism and hype that so characterizes many of today's financial news/analysis shows. In other words, it was much of what the broadcast realm is not today.

But that's not to say that Rukeyser couldn't liven things up -- far from it. Rukeyser's clever, pun-filled humor was legendary, and his ability to poke fun at some of the biggest decision makers on Wall Street, in Washington -- and at himself -- let you know that he took his work seriously, but he didn't take himself too seriously. And viewers could quickly detect Rukeyser's values, or what he knew was important in life, because he stated them often: his wife Alexandra and three daughters, and his close friends.

Rukeyser: a role model, ...for more than Wall Street

Rukeyser's conduct and example is in stark contrast to many of today's decision makers on Wall Street and in Washington, many of whom seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Maybe the second best thing about Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser was that it was the perhaps the only thing about Wall Street that week. For decades, even well into the era of cable television and the birth of the Internet, Wall Street Week was the only, substantive, weekly analysis show on national television to wrap up the week's events from the Concrete Canyon.

However, that's not to cast aspersions at every, current financial news/analysis show or to deplore the increase in financial information available today: some shows are doing a good job at increasing investor knowledge of money, markets, investment, and the stocks they own. But we also know that many are not, and serve as static that simply clutters the mind, or even worse, that misleads investors.

And when you think about it, in this decade, clutter, errors, and acts that mislead the public have not been limited to financial television shows. The United States seems to have abounded in them in this decade, which is why the nation misses, and could sorely use, more decision makers like Louis Rukeyser, right now.

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Financial Editor Joseph Lazzaro is based in New York.