Below is the most damning clip from the Cramer\Stewart face-off. Stewart is obviously a genius, and he had Cramer's number. Still, something about it all didn't sit quite right with me. Stewart rightly attacked CNBC for not doing their job, and then he attacked Cramer for "throwing plastic cows through his legs." But I couldn't stop wondering the sort of nation takes its most crucial advice from a guy who throws cows through his legs?
In all of this, I find myself unsatisfied by the critique. For me, the investigation always begins at home--Who are we? Why is there a market for foolishness? I don't know much about the financial world. I come to this equipped solely with the weaponry I was deeded by the streets of Baltimore, and in the home of Cheryl Waters and Paul Coates. The shield in that arsenal, is the intuitive sense that no one gives you a house for nothing, that you don't base your future on advice from the dude who cameos on Arrested Development. Nothing special there. I think we all have access to the shield of Street Knowledge, and yet in these times, we seem to have put our faith, not in our innate sense, but in the worst sort of clownery.
I like Jon Stewart. I thought he did a good thing yesterday. But I left that interview unsatisfied. I left it wondering about the animal in us I know who Jim Cramer is. I know what wracks him. But what about us? Who are we in all this? Why are CNBC ratings still soaring? What madness has led us to hand off our shields and put our future in the hands of shaman and faith-healers?
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Heh, this is exactly what I posted on the pre-buzz comments, unaware that this post was going up. I see we're somewhat on the same page:
"I think that Stewart is the only one who can take Cramer down is because he's the only one who isn't "tainted" by the pressure of the 24-hour news cycle. Who from CNN could take on Cramer without a risk of backfire from a clip show of ill-advised comments from that network? Or FOX? Or anybody else?
I feel a little bad for Cramer (but not much) because what we're seeing is attempt by the media to fill a demand that exists, but isn't a reasonable demand -- non-stop, constant credible information. It's a pressure on all media right now that comes from the consumers. So when it backfires and ends up hurting the consumers, then yeah, it's time to step back and make sure consumers understand why it happened. But it would be incredibly foolish and self-defeating to act as the CNBC's behavior was some arbitrary -- or even greedy -- development. They are trying to meet a consumer need. Whether it is possible to meet such a need consistently is something that needs to be analyzed."
You're getting at one of my major problems with a large percentage of humanity: valuing faith over doubt. People see this guy who himself got rich in the world of finance, and then has a TV show on the subject of making wealth, they accept that he knows what he is talking about. People are so quick to accept what's presented to them because it just seems credible and right. Not accepting these things, and subjecting them to multiple layers of scrutiny, investigation, inquiry and skepticism, are what separate effective journalists and indidivuals from the rest (this also strongly applies to atheists/agnostics vs. religious believers, but that's another debate.)
Doubt over faith.
Is this anything new? Have we not always put our future in the hands of shaman and faith-healers? This is what we've done since the beginning of time. The wardrobes have just changed.
I don't think Stewart's main criticism was that Cramer and CNBC dish out a lot of shitty advice and that we're idiots for lapping it up. Rather, it was that the network, with its supposed financial journalists, was entirely uncritical of CEOs and the market and instead was a cheerleader for everything that was going on. He argues that they shouldn't just fellate every guest while turning a blind eye to what they knew was coming.
The same one that re-elected Bush. The same one that bought into the concept that owning a more home that you could afford was the ultimate credit card. The same one that believes reality tv is real rather than mind sapping.
I think the problem arises when there is a system that much of the general public feels like they have an outsider's understanding of - in this case, Wall Street and finance. People tend to feel disadvantaged, because there's a convoluted system with rules that aren't obvious to the general public. Street knowledge and common sense alone don't seem adequate to navigate the system - you need access to the code. So you turn to people like Cramer, who claim to understand the code.
I think there's some truth to that - in many areas, you do need specialized knowledge to understand what's going on. The problem is that developing specialized knowledge is hard. It requires thinking, learning, integrating new knowledge with your existing knowledge, and forming sound conclusions. So Cramer and his ilk are a very appealing shortcut. But as your street knowledge should remind you, shortcuts are rarely the answer.
The thing I focused on is Stewart not letting Cramer get away with the "I'm a circus clown, I'm just an entertainer, my audience knows not to trust me too much" defense. I think it's right to say that this opens up much bigger questions about audiences and the public sphere, though, because in some sense the Cramers of the mass media are right to say that a substantial proportion of media consumers stopped caring some time ago about whether media producers were responsible or accurate in their work, that schtick and performativity became far more important in driving audiences.
There are a lot of complicated things underpinning that shift: loss of trust in public institutions, the fragmenting of the public sphere, a post-facto awareness that there was no Golden Age of journalistic rectitude, a loosely postmodern view of knowledge and truth (as popular or more so on the right), an accelerating cynicism about information management, and so on. But yes, at some point, the anger ought to turn back on the people who underwrite CNBC or much of the MSM by watching it and demanding nothing of it.
Coates come on man, let's be fair? Cramer's show is entertainment.
You're (not personally) an idiot if you're taking tips from him.
The market was at 12K, 3 months after Bear it was at 10+ Pre-Lehman, if YOUR FINANCIAL ADVISOR didn't have the bona fides to get you out b/c the bubble was over he was listening to Cramer (see above point) or he was derelict. Either way it's not really Cramer's fault.
As for the shenanigans, Stewart is right, but from 2003-2007 there were A LOT OF RETIREES who left high on the hog...what say you to that?
k1
Squeeze the trigger, and bodies are hauled off.
Yeah, so - this is a tough one. On the one hand, there are multiple, overlapping classes of people - haloed and hallowed with a sheen of something like "professionalism" - who have a disproportionate influence in our collective mindspace.
On the other hand, they didn't JUST give it to themselves. We are complicit; my dad taught me "caveat emptor" and I never bought a house I couldn't afford or invested in a stock shilled by some screeching side-show on the TVs (and I have bought stock, and I bought it like this "what's going to sell no matter what else is going on? chocolate...people indulge in it when times are good and console themselves with it when times are bad." In depth analysis, right? But it worked; my stocks were good). On the other hand, I took out a metric ton of student loan debt to go to grad. school which I will likely owe until the day I die. I thought it was an investment, and it was - but not in my future earnings. Nobody owes me anything just because the higher education I paid for is not going to pay me back with actual money.
This gets to me at sort of the heart of american culture, and one of (to circle this around to other issues) the hardest and least submissible to "rules" things about us - citizenship (and other forms of less institutional community) is both a right AND a privilege.
I am not entitled to recompense because I made a bad decision. I am entitled to recompense if someone defrauded me. What exactly am I entitled to if someone was able to defraud me because of my greed? Isn't that how cons WORK? I guess I'm entitled to my life-lesson and my anger, but some of that anger better be self-directed and let's hope that the life-lesson I took wasn't that people are vicious, amoral jerks but that it's entirely too easy to make bad decisions when your motivations are greed and laziness (getting something for nothing).
I am all for accountability, but who's accountable to whom? There are undoubtedly people who were pure D flimflammed. There are undoubtedly people whose avaricious motivation was rewarded in kind. The majority of us fall somewhere in the space between.
And the thing about THAT is: of course I want someone to help me, even if I was complicit in my own mess up. And I want to help people, too, even if they were complicit in their own mess ups. And I love Jon Stewart like he gave BIRTH to me. But I think when you're getting help despite being an accessory to any "crimes" committed against you - because of the golden rule (I mean that's why people are helping, not that's why you got gamed) - I think then that you don't get to be righteous about your wrath.
Props to Cramer for being willing to go on and take the beating for all of "them" from all of "us" - we have no lofty position of moral superiority from which to administer it.
To slide it sideways - I'm starting with the man in the mirror.
There will always be those with access and power that will have influence over the masses. We are social animals, we take our cues from our community. Study up on the prison experiments and realize how much influence over our behaviors those with some authority have over us.
This ends up sounding like a very Randian argument. Why didn't all those little people know better and behave differently? We weren't all raised by your family, Coates.
People in positions of power who use that power irresponsibly should be held accountable.
Meanwhile those of us born post-baby boomer have been basically told that social security won't be there for us. With stagnating wages, saving won't be enough to retire. You need to grow your retirement in the market. Remember, Stewart came at this from the viewpoint of buy and hold investors. Those people have no reason to look into the mirror instead of pointing a finger at the institutions that allowed this problem to occur.
The shield in that arsenal, is the intuitive sense that no one gives you a house for nothing, that you don't base your future on advice from the dude who cameos on Arrested Development.
For years, I had no idea that Cramer was an actual person and not a creation of Mitch Hurwitz's crazy genius. Then I learned that he was real and people really listened to his financial advice and I was astounded.
AD was kind of prescient, actually. Even in fiction, Cramer upgraded companies run by crooks and imbeciles (no offense to the Bluths intended) and backed by shady real estate shenanigans. Should have been a sign....
I think a huge amount of the dumb news coverage/analysis we see (of which the screaming CNBC guy is but one small part) comes out of this desire of the audience to pretend to be getting informed and smarter, while really wanting to be entertained.
I mean, understanding financial markets involves a lot of boring technical stuff, a lot of hard-to-follow explanations of multiplier effects and rational expectations and lifetime income, detailed understandings of what the hell a CDS really is or why people got AAA ratings on stuff that turned out to be really risky. But if you put that on TV, you've got Charlie Rose or a televised lecture from a university finance class, and your ratings will fall through the floor.
IMO, most TV news coverage, especially on the 24 hour channels, is basically junk food disguised as health food. Ooooh, look, these yummy cookies are fat free so they must be good for me. And this TV show is talking about hot stocks and interviewing CEOs, it must be teaching me something.
I had the same reaction as TNC. I couldn't help thinking was that, if one guy was finally going to take a beating for the mess we're in, there were about 10,000,000 more deserving names than Jim Cramer. But of course none of them would have gone on The Daily Show (and now they sure as hell will not). Why bother, when you get a larger audience, more credit, and easier questions by doing a network puff piece?
One of the things I didn't notice in the chaos of the time was that the questions that so flummoxed Sarah Palin during her TV interviews were not actually tough questions. They were softballs. Everyone has applauded Katie Couric for holding Palin's feet to the flame, but she didn't do anything like what Jon did last night. I'm actually a little torn, as a Daily Show fan, because I think Jon is MUCH better when he is clowning around than when he gets up on his high horse. But I guess it's better than the alternative, which is not having anyone ask those questions.
TNC -- It seems to me that you're asking the questions that The Daily Show and Colbert Report want their audience to ask: "Why do we listen to these idiots? What's wrong with us?!"
It may begin as a satire and critique of the media, but doesn't that implicitly contain a critique of the audience? Maybe some will argue that the critique should be more explicit, but I think it's more effective to lead your audience to ask the important questions on its own than it is to tell them what important questions to ask.
Stewart and Colbert, in addition to skewering the media and entertaining us, offer this (admittedly unspoken) challenge: "The media thinks you're stupid. Stop proving them right."
Here is the problem. Not only do Jim Cramer and CNBC report the news, in a lot of respects they also make the news. When they have a CEO come on and say the company is doing great don't you think their stock is helped? I do. When you have a guy like Cramer who the network promotes as a "financial expert" tells you should hang on to a stock don't you think people listen and that stock goes higher too? Why these programs have such big audiences is because way more people are in the market now with the advent of 401ks and Roth IRAs as a opposed to traditional pensions. There is also the influx of day traders to consider. Almost every working person now over the age of 35 has some part of their retirement in the market. And a lot of those same people aren't all that financially savy. So of course there is going to be a demand for people who can tell them what they should be doing with those investments. And honestly I could understand if these "experts" just made some bad calls. But when their coverage actually affects those stocks up and down and they allow people to come on their show and spout bullshit without anybody calling them out on it I feel like they should bear a lot of responsibility.
Here is my thing, right now we have truth in advertising laws that govern commercials but we don't have the same laws that deal with shows that claim to report the news. I don't believe that there should be a Fairness Doctrine, but I DO believe that we should have some uniform standards of reporting for news shows. If you are going to call yourself the news or the financial news or whatever then at some point you should be held to account for putting crap out there that you know is false or probably false. Even if its your friend who gave you the false information.
I came away from watching the interview last night feeling great and even better this morning when I saw the uncut versions. Jon Stewart did what a lot of us would like to see being done by more of our journalists on Tee Vee. He didn't accept any of Cramer's answers when he knew Cramer was lying and even had video to prove it. Thats the kinda shit I would love to see on Meet The Press but also something I know that will never happen.
TNC,
I had the same reaction especially to this part:
OK so the caps are mine. And my question is this: Isn't this the definition of the stock market? You hand your money over to people who do with it what they will. A little rudimentary but true. You would like to trust the person you are handing your money too, ehem Madoff, but ultimately you are taking a risk. You are entering your money into the biggest casino on the planet, but you honestly believe that there is no chance you might lose? That seems a little naive to me. Of course, there are degrees to which your money is used in dubious ways. But the stock market is there to "invest" (ie bet) on various companies. Furthermore, if you felt like it was risky to get in, or hand the money over to someone else, why aren't you out there trading yourself? I know your answer: I don't know enough about it, but my broker does. So, you don't know enough about it to work it yourself, but your willing to pour your retirement into it, then act flabbergasted when it returns to the level you first put in there? I'm not siding with shady traders and the networks that support them, but let's call this what it is, enabling. If you hand me a pile of money and say, go make me money please, I'm going to do everything I can do make sure that happens, and while I'm at it I'm going to try to make as much money for myself as I can, with your money. So, yes, Mr. Stewart, you are exactly right, if you enter the market you are capitalizing people like Cramer's adventures, but you should know that going in, you share the blame here too.
props to Jon Stewart for not backing down.
props to Cramer for giving a shit. And sitting there and taking it like an adult.
And shame on the rest of us for listening to "them" in the first place.
The market is not supposed to be a casino:
If there are gaping informational asymmetries then the press should be cheerleading better regulation to address market failure, not tout strategies to make money off the asymmetries. The capitalizing was of the "adventure" and that's the problem.
Yes, the faith-based approach to judgment and thought is a serious problem.
Yes, we shouldn't be taking advice from the TV.
But I think what Stewart was so mad about was Cramer's split personalities and the obvious conflict of interests with something like CNBC and the market it purports to report on. On the one hand, Cramer is a paid entertainer who, at best, earnestly wants people to invest and make themselves some money. On the other hand, he's the quiet, shady character in that grainy video, talking about how the SEC can't catch you doing this or that. Stewart said, 'I want to watch that guy, not the clown.' Why? Because the shady Cramer is actually being honest, and the CNBC Cramer is a joke who only has a job on TV if he helps the network help Wall Street! It's all about dishonesty and lack of accountability. Viewers should be honest with themselves about the likely value of taking financial advice from CNBC, but CNBC should be honest about what they actually are.
"In Cramer We Trust" is a lie, a ruse meant to maintain support for the bigger lie. That's the problem. It's fraud. It's false advertising. It's sociopathic.
There's plenty of blame to spread around and definitely people should remember that you don't get something for nothing.
But I think this from gex gets to the real issue:
Yeah, exactly. In every job I've had, I've been told that investing in the 401K or the 403b is a great thing to do. Some companies think it's such a great idea they even match some of the contributions. Every financial pundit I have *ever* heard on TV has talked about what a great thing investing for the long term is. How the market historically goes up. How if you invest $2,000/year starting at age 22 you'll have a million dollars at age 55 (or something like that) - based on historical returns. It's repeated like a mantra. And really, what other option is there? Putting the money in a mattress?
So people do the "prudent" thing. They dutifully fund their 401Ks. They even add on an IRA. And all along, people in the know, like Jim Cramer and his pals at the big banks and financial institutions and their corrupt cronies in the government are wheeling and dealing with our money. And then it all comes crashing down. And they don't pay. And we get screwed.
Sure, we could say, "Investing in the market is like going to a casino so I'm not going to do it. My money stays in the mattress". But it's not supposed to be that way. There are government regulators and laws, etc. so that the market is supposed to be based on merit. If a company is worthy it succeeds; if it's crap it fails. But that's not how it has worked. The double dealings and lies and manipulations and "fomenting" of markets has been going on. And people like Jim Cramer and his ilk KNEW IT. They DID IT. And they've walked off with the money and the rest of us are paying for it.
And the fact that networks like CNBC have enabled and encouraged the CEOs at these companies and the investment bankers to do this kind of thing is ethically and morally wrong and most likely illegal. But will they pay for their part in this tragedy? Ha. Ice cubes in hell when that happens.
Thank goodness for Jon Stewart. He may not have captured all of the anger and issues, but he's done more than *any* other person out there. No journalists dare go where he's gone. They should be ashamed of their timidity. This is a tremendous interview. Jon Stewart deserves the Medal of Freedom.
Well, I think Jon tried to "qualify" his interview somewhat. For one thing, the idea that he was talking about people who who were advised by financial experts (not necessarily CNBC) to put their money into 401ks and such and then later having that store gutted. And they trusted this money to supplement their retirement, not because they want to get filthy rich. These people aren't necessarily people who watch CNBC and follow the stocks market regularly and who sometimes buy and sell.
My discomfort with the interview was that Cramer and CNBC are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this stuff. And Jon, perhaps with the assumption that he was never going to get anyone other than Cramer representing the financial industry on TDS, kinda went all out with his (our) frustration. Stewart really tried to say, this is not about Cramer, this is about the entire secret industry of traders and hedge fund managers who fuck with perception and who end up fucking the options with which our stored wealth is tied. And overall, this is about them taking advantage of our ignorance of what goes on behind the scenes because people like those on CNBC refuse to uncover and make those connections.
And this is not about "blind faith". This is about the lack of reliable, responsible watchdogging.
But it's hard to project these nuances when it's you essentially beating on/ pleading with one other person. And I'll tell you what, Cramer's voice was shaking. No matter what d-bag thing he'll say to brush this episode off, he managed to feel some entirely appropriate shame.
props to Cramer for giving a shit. And sitting there and taking it like an adult.
Maybe I'm cynical about this, but I think Cramer went in thinking that he'd be able to joke back and forth--he came in wearing his uniform, loosened tie, rolled up sleeves, and got his ass handed to him. I think the shock was more of an act, hoping to deflect some of the criticism back on Stewart, and in the eyes of some in the media it worked. Look at the comments about Stewart "not being funny" or "messianic anger." So I don't know that Cramer gave a shit so much as he's the public face of CNBC and just had to take one for the team.
Now yes, he could have stormed out, and he didn't, so good on him for that, but that's really limited praise.
I agree with nina s above. As to who "we" are, and why we take advice from the good folks at MSNBC, I think that deserves some explanation.
First, I think a lot of the information out there is just really complex, really specialized, and most of us just do not understand. By information, I am not only referring to financial information, but also foreign policy, economics, the nuances of politics, health information, etc. Now, we probably did not learn about these for a variety of reasons: 1) we did not learn them in school, 2) it is not something that is particularly interesting for most people, so they do not realize there is a problem until it happens, and 3) people are busy doing other things. So, what happens is that we rely on "experts" to help us - people with backgrounds and experience in a particular field. And sometimes the experts are wrong. Sometimes the experts are hacks. Most people just do not know, and they don't know until it is too late.
The other problem is that most people just do not have enough time to develop the specialized knowledge about political, foreign policy, financial, and economic issues. I am assuming that most people who come to this site are political junkies who are interested in this sort of information. Most people are not interested in these issues. They have jobs, kids, and a host of other responsibilities, and they might only have a half-hour to one hour a day to watch the news. Thus, people rely on these newschannels to provide accurate news information.
For a particularly moronic take on the interview, see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/arts/television/14watc.html?hp
The last line made me cringe. What a shit article.
This wasn't about just Jim Cramer. This was a take down of an entire political/economic class, who - through their insatiable greed and sense of entitlement - did the most to get us into this mess. Not only do they refuse to take any responsibility whatsoever and try to pin this on unions, Democrats, brown people, hemorrhoids, etc., they're out their one the streets demanding "MORE, MORE, MORE!!!" Look, we - the American people - had a trillion dollar surplus in 2000. This was all our money and these pricks got the government to hand it over to them via tax cuts which went overwhelmingly to them - and they did this while the country was embroiled in two wars! They've gotten nearly everything they've wanted these past twenty five years: A top marginal tax rate reduced from 50% in 1984 to 36% in 2008; nearly non-existent government regulation so they could engage in a form of speculative crony capitalism; and nearly the complete castration of organized labor. They don't send their children off to fight for this country and now they're threatening revolt at the idea that perhaps they have some basic responsibility to help out their country in a time of severe economic crisis. They're fucking leaches.
No, Stewart didn't call out just Cramer, he was calling out this entire mindset. He's been doing it for years, this is just the first time it's really caught fire.
Thank god for it too.
I meant to say...they're out there on the streets...
I started my Friday a bit early. Hehe
A very few people get to write the blogs of life. An awful lot of people can only read them.
I have to agree with sgwhiteinfla's post. Jim Cramer is touted as a financial expert, and despite all of his ridiculous ranting and cow throwing, he is not an idiot. He has some respectable credentials to prove it. So, at the end of the day, one does have some trust, some faith in what he recommends. And given that we are told time and time again to invest, invest, invest b/c Social Security won't be there, pensions are nonexistent (for most people), and health costs are only going up, what are people supposed to do? There really is no other source of financial advice (maybe with the exception of Suze Orman who is annoying, but provides solid advice at least from what I've heard)out there. I've been to several financial advisors throughout the years and each gave me the same advice as Cramer (minus the shouting). Stay in the market, things are going up, real estate is great, yada, yada, yada. Finally, I've decided to take my and my husband's retirement planning into my own hands and feel completely lost, especially now when I've lost trust in my own bank (BofA) and my retirement fund is worth less now than when I started saving. It's insane.
So, I feel no sympathy for Cramer. He and the rest of his network deserve to be raked over the coals. I do agree, though, that we as viewers have a responsibility to demand more from such networks. If we don't, we'll get the same buffoonery dressed as news. Jon Stewart's show last night was one step in that direction.
Look at the Madoff scheme: It's easy to say "Oh, the way it always went up 10-15%--never 2% in a bad year for other funds or 20% in a great year for other funds--was a tipoff. The graph that just went up in a straight line was a tipoff. The guys who tried to reverse engineer it and proved it was mathematically impossible--people should have known." And yet the SEC always believed things were fine. The people who did the last two went to the SEC and said "look, Madoff is obviously running a scam" and nothing happened. So if I'm a regular investor, and I hear that Madoff is a safe dependable fund--not showy like the up-30-this-year guys, but steady and dependable--is it so unreasonable that I think this is a nice safe investment, and that I assume the regulatory agencies would shut Madoff down if it wasn't legit? I get that this partly worked because people believed that a fund could always go up, and 10% a year is a hell of a lot more than truly "safe" investments like bonds will return. But if Madoff fooled the SEC over and over, why not ordinary little investors? Should they be smarter than the rating agencies?
I still frankly don't see how a hell of a lot more people at that company weren't involved.
And for buying a house--some people deserved to go down, but some people listened to earnest financial advice about how buying now made sense--you thought the market would tank 5 years ago, and now prices are even higher, and if you'd bought then look what you could afford now*--and buying with nothing down still let you build equity. Why were mortgages available for interest only and no money down? Why were those mortgages insured at such low rates when they are objectively risky?
Stewart stands out because he was willing to stand up to Colbert. If he'd laid low like his brethren this would have blown over--Colbert isn't going to run the same clips every night if CNBC keeps its head down; it's boring. As many others have said, there should be a lot more specific news about how we got into this mess so we don't repeat it. I think we've just stopped with "dig out, regulate more in the future."
*If we'd bought a condo when my husband was in grad school we'd have made out like bandits and be living in a larger house now. But I didn't want to risk being stuck with 2 mortgages when he finished school and we moved. I can't say people who chose otherwise are idiots--they would have done exceptionally well, because the market didn't start to tank for another 8 years.
A commenter on another piece in the Times made a great point. The way the major networks and 24-hour cable news channels covered this "Stewart-Cramer War" over the past week displays their own idiocy and failure to engage in true journalism. They built this whole thing up as entertainment, a show of two personalities engaging in a battle. The real story is that a comedy news show (admittedly on a station owned by a media conglomerate) has spent the past week excoriating the media-financial complex and is engaged in a much higher form of journalism than any of the outlets that are supposed to be doing this job in the first place.
Instead they create intense graphics of the two men with dramatic sounds and leads, which The Daily Show is already well-prepared to pick out and use against them the next night. They just blindly let themselves wade into Stewart's gunsights, continuing to expose themselves as mere entertainers rather than watchdogs.
Deborah -- I think you've got your Stewarts and your Colberts (and your Cramers) mixed up.
TNC,
Ever see the original Kurosawa version of "The Seven Samurai?" Kikuchiyo's monologue is kind of apt to the situation. (Kikuchiyo is one of the samurai the villagers hired to protect them from bandits, but he was a farmer's son).
"What do you think of farmers? You think they're saints? Hah! They're foxy beasts! They say, "We've got no rice, we've no wheat. We've got nothing!" But they have! They have everything! Dig under the floors! Or search the barns! You'll find plenty! Beans, salt, rice, sake! Look in the valleys, they've got hidden warehouses! They pose as saints but are full of lies! If they smell a battle, they hunt the defeated! They're nothing but stingy, greedy, blubbering, foxy, and mean! God damn it all! But then . . . who made them such beasts? You did! You samurai did it! You burn their villages! Destroy their farms! Steal their food! Force them to labour! Take their women! And kill them if they resist! So what should farmers do?"
Not that financial advisers are going around literally pillaging and looting, but the situation is kind of similar. It's a cycle, action-reaction.
When they have a CEO come on and say the company is doing great don't you think their stock is helped? I do.
I don't think this regularly has a huge effect on the price of a stock. CEOs have often gone on TV announcing their earnings and saying the future is bright, yet if the announced earnings don't meet Wall Street expectations, the stock very often moves down.
Also, financial people have huge amounts of manpower constantly researching these firms and pour over minute details. I am not saying they are perfect, but I have been listening to auto execs tout their companys for my adult life and it almost never moves the price.
It might have more effect on smaller companies that are often moved by various rumors like in teh 90's when Y2K breakthroughs were often touted as the next road to wealth, but I don't think the average CEO can build much corporate wealth by appearing on TV. Anymore than the President can end a recession by saying shit isn't that bad.
Ta-Nehisi,
I haven't time right now to read the whole thread, but you ask such a good question that I feel compelled to say just one thing.
I have been in the stock market since 1992 and the reason is that I worked for a non-profit that did not pay into Social Security. We had 403B and 401A plans instead and the employer made contributions (20% of annual salary each year.)
What you learn very fast is that your so-called financial advisers who work for the company that manages your plans are just salesmen. They go to little training classes and learn how to hawk stocks and bonds.
The next thing you learn, especially after a bear market like 2001-2002 is that CNBC and all similar services are full of shit.
So, what do you do?
Most ordinary people who are trying to manage their 401Ks seem to go along with "dollar cost averaging" or whatever kind of strategy they come up with that takes a "long view" of the market, based on the belief that the market will always make money in the long run and outperform other safer investments. All I can tell you is that it hasn't worked for me, at least not yet.
However, the point I want to make is that there were people who understood what was going on in the market and predicted the meltdown. No one wanted to hear it while the DOW was headed for 14,000 but I can tell you they were there. They howl like lone wolves in the night and they are dismissed as prophets of doom. Then, of course, they are vindicated but never given much credit.
One name comes to mind right away, Henry C K Liu who writes for Asia Times Online but has his own website:
http://www.henryckliu.com/
Take a look at his home page. His articles are generally difficult to read, at least for me. I have to read them twice usually. However, one article he wrote about the "liquidity bubble" quite some time ago prompted me to keep a significant amount of my retirement money out of stocks and that is the reason I won't be destitute.
Anyhow, TNC, you are a journalist and you know the answer to your own question. The real information is out there, but those who want it have to go to some effort and dig deeper. Not many do.
"But if Madoff fooled the SEC over and over, why not ordinary little investors? Should they be smarter than the rating agencies?"
Actually, they should -- or at least, if not smarter, then more careful. The SEC and other government agencies have burdens of proof to meet. As an investor, the first minute you hear of any suspicion that a guy is crooked, you don't invest with him. You see a guy who's *promising* any level of return in the stock market, you don't invest with him. Anybody who is going to be an active investor, as opposed in investing in indexes and mutual funds, needs to know this stuff.
Now, this is why the Wall Street Journal failed so completely. They didn't have to get the story that proves Madoff is a fraud. They just had to report, "the SEC was tipped to possible fraud by Bernie Madoff and opened an investigation," and poof, Madoff is done.
Just wanted to say great post. Far too easy just to laugh and pile on. I'm glad someone is holding the rest of us accountable as well.
The whole Bush admin econ line was the "ownership society." All of this financial bait and switch began with Reagan, the idea that we could be a nation of tax evaders, and let the foxes take over the henhouse of our national finances unabated to the quarterback without so much as even a 5 yard penalty. I've said it before and I'll say it again: during the last 8 years ninety-five percent of the wealth created by Americans went to ten percent of our citizenry.
There are many things about the US better today than several decades ago, but one thing is clear, working for a living has in America become a losing money operation. And until our economy is based on real product, this will continue.
What bothers me more in our national psyche is that we continue to dwell on the trivial, while the significant gets overlooked. I think the recent addition of Van Jones who is making the connection between environment, poverty, and jobs to the Obama staff something worth noting and getting into. Forty years ago, people dismissed out of hand Jimmy Carter's discussion of energy and here we are today having spent as much money in Iraq as we have so far tossed into the sinkhole of our economic meltdown.
Most of us did not go make a killing on Wall St. In fact, between the lines of the Stewart interview was the core of his anger--his mother's nest egg financed this bs. But it was enabled by a conservative governance ideology that was never concerned with what real wealth is.
Yes, some Americans who were not in the financial rip off business got greedy, but by and large most Americans got screwed. Our problem is that we continually marginalize problem solvers and make the right wing noise machine controversial celebrities whom we love to hate; the grind of our lives require that we veg out; it's entertainment--football, comedy shows, cnbc--whatever floats the boat. It's easier to bandy about Cramer or Limbaugh, Steele or on the other side the poor, the female, the gay, the immigrant, the Muslim, the pc liberal elite, playing all the cards that push our buttons rather than doing the less fun or interesting day in day out transformative work that is necessary.
But all this is as old as humanity; pride goeth before a fall. Icarus has nothing on the USA, and history has one certain lesson: noone stays forever on the top of the heap.
"Nothing was delivered, and I've brought you here to say/just exactly what you had in mind when you made everybody pay." Bob Dylan
Mark has it right-- there is institutional-level obfuscation going on. Cramer's clownishness makes him an easy target -- and easier to feel sorry for, and makes the whole thing easier to dismiss as just some great unwashed, gullible, "faithful," TV-addled masses being had, 3-card-monte-style -- but his industry has the problem bone-deep, and it's something he has willingly chosen to embody and defend. In its worst excesses, in good times and bad, sickness and health.
Leonard Cohen sez: Everybody knows the fight was fixed-- the poor stay poor while the rich get rich. I don't see why some people here, this blog's author included, seem to think it unfair that this fact be pointed out, loudly and pointedly, every now and again.
Call it a market correction.
Snake oils salesmen, false prophets, wealth ministers, down right phonies. I with mr. Coates. Look in the mirror first. I order for Madoff to rip any anybody off he first had to get their money. Something for nothing is far too prevalent in our society.
A healthy economy relies multiple players.
We need tenacious capitalists out to make a buck and a billion bucks--and we've got 'em.
We need government regulators making sure the basics on the stocks are honest and the banks are sound--and we sure as hell haven't had those.
We need the media tracking the regulators--and they've been MIA for more than a decade, and that's where Cramer and his bosses are truly, deeply responsible.
And, apparently, we need the brilliant guys with a comic eye to push the media itself.
No one should have believed Cramer, but the fraking National Broadcasting Corporation should have had real analysts working over the SEC and the Fed long ago. If Stewart has to punch out their clown to get them to wake up, that's fair enough.
(More generally, we need liberals who are serious about hard work and real craft and good sense. What TNC is pushing for in this post is the original FDR recipe, and we need a lot more of it.)
Coates I love you man, but I swear you don't get it when you try to break it down to "nobody gets a house for free" and that you're buying into the right-wing baloney that has tried to blame this financial meltdown on poor people who wanted a house, particularly black and brown people who the government told Frannie and Freddie to help get a house.
This is the meme on the right - that the crisis was caused by people not paying their mortgages.
This is bullshit. As Stewart alluded to, but didn't get into nearly enough, the crisis blew up not because of mortgages themselves, but rather because of financial derivatives and credit default swaps that allowed rich Wall Street guys to make speculative bets on the market. The mortgage crisis is big in real terms but relatively small compared to the outlays the government has made. $2 trillion would pay off every single mortgage in the country. But the Fed and TARP etc have put out way more money than that? Why haven't they just payed off everyone's mortgage if they were gonna spend all that money? Because the money isn't to help solve the "mortgage crise" it's there to help the "financial crisis" which happened when Wall Street douchebags made bets on whether people would pay their mortgages, and places like AIG insured those mortgages and bets, and so instead of having a $2 trillion problem, these gamblers bet it up to a $12 trillion problem at least, though they seem to be hiding exactly how big their exposure is.
The problem isn't the mortgages themselves, it's the assholes who placed bets on whether the mortgages would fail or not, and took $2 trillion of exposure and raised the exposure exponentially to like $14 trillion. Which should be illegal. But the Bush folks just let it happen. Again and again. And prided themselves that money was being made. But money wasn't being made because of anything real. It was just financial derivatives. And now it's time to pay the piper. But the people who played games don't pay - it's you and me, the taxpayer.
Jon Stewart would do a much bigger service if he did an entire episode on how "they gambled our 401Ks" because that's 100% true and yet the common man (including myself of course) hardly understands it. This needs to be exposed.
Look, if it was just a problem with people paying their mortgages, it isn't that big a deal, because those mortgages are backed by real assets - i.e. house and land - and while those assets might not be priced as high as they were, they are legitimate assets.
Financial derivatives aren't based on assets. They're like betting on a football game. No assets change hands, only money. It's a sick game, and was illegal until the theives on Wall Street convinced the theifs in washington to change the rules. And now here we are.
It's a sick, sick thing. Just like Iraq, the people who should have known or tried to know just ran with the crowd and cheerleader. I hate them all...
I think you misunderstand Stewart's complaint. The silly newsertainment on CNBC is indicative of the network's deeply unserious attitude toward their subject matter. If they took it more seriously, they wouldn't be so cavalier. It's not, as Jon says, individual bits of advice Cramer gives (and therefore whether there are people foolish enough to take that advice is irrelevant), it's that the network clearly thinks of these things as a game and "it's not a fucking game."
Like their chummy corporate overlords, they don't give a hoot about ordinary Americans or the American economy as a whole. That is why they short sell, overinflate bubbles, trash-talk stock on a whim, etc, with impugnity and without any understanding of the gravity of their actions. And that's why they have the temerity to huff about helping homeowners while taking trillions in bailout funds and guarantees. They really are that blind, that selfish. As John Edwards would say, they live in the "other" America. And in that other America, they have the luxury of a mountain of cash to cushion their fall when they tank the economy, unlike folks in "this" America. Why should they care?
The fact is, most Americans don't have any of the stock that makes up the day to day fast-trading of the market. At best, they have long-term investments like 401ks. But that doesn't mean they don't feel the effects when CNBC and CEOs play fast and loose with the market. Not only do they lose any teensy investment they themselves made, ordinary Americans share none of the upside of those bubbles because they don't own corporate stock, but as taxpayers, they subsidize the downside.
THAT is the issue.
And for the record, I focus on Americans, but the truth is these morons have done this to the whole world. The degree of human suffering that will result from their short-term, greedy tunnel vision is really difficult to even contemplate.
"I have to agree with sgwhiteinfla's post. Jim Cramer is touted as a financial expert, and despite all of his ridiculous ranting and cow throwing, he is not an idiot. He has some respectable credentials to prove it. So, at the end of the day, one does have some trust, some faith in what he recommends..."
You've got to be kidding me. The man's a buffoon. When/if you bet on sports, do you watch Sportscenter and go with whatever Emmett Smith says, because, hey, he's on TV and he was a great football player? No, because he's an idiot. It's the same thing. Cramer isn't guilty of anything other than doing a silly show for stock market geeks.
I am a big Jon Stewart fan, and seldom see Cramer, but I thought the interview was a bit demogoguic, especially since for whatever reason Cramer had clearly decided not to fight back before Steward could be said to beat him into submission.
Cramer's claim that the tape that Stewart kept showing from was an attempt to bring out the problems and highlight what fixes were needed was actually kind of plausible. Taking it as actually a face value admission that he Cramer was not to be trusted seems somewhat odd.
Worse, Stewart dismissed Cramer's fairly plausible defense that his predictions are simply his best guesses at a time, while the shouting is entertainment. Stewart seemed to be suggesting that the clownish nature of Cramer's presentation would lead viewers to think he wasn't just guessing. But since when does acting like a clown add to ones credibility?
There are a lot of problems with CNBC, particularly with the issues of access. But they wound up being touched on too lightly. By contrast the fact that CNBC thought the bubble would continue longer than it did or even have a soft landing is an error not a scandal. The willingness to run only positive information to get future interviews would be a scandal, but that was never successfully pinned on Cramer.
Following up the Foulness, when I heard AIG the insurance people needed a bailout, I thought "Oh, they have home owners insurance and mortgage default insurance and things are a little tight as more people default." Now by mortgage default insurance I meant that stuff I, personally, would pay on a mortgage over $250,000.
Instead it evidently means that Larry Joe could take out a morgage, and then 100 people could bet that Larry Joe would not default. And AIG covered that bet again and again and again. It's akin to betting on football, but AIG had no idea where the spread was--it just figured last year's percentage of defaults would be next year's. Bailing out AIG was covering their bet with the 100 people who thought Joe would default, or who bet that he wouldn't but insured themselves against the loss. How did this get a bailout?
So we're going to bail out the people done in by mortgage backed securities, which appear to basically have been so complex almost no one understood them. (One firm that did make money had someone who was smart but didn't understand them try to figure them out; he figured out they were nuts and bought--from AIG etc--insurance that paid off when the worst funds failed. But when he mentioned this to one of these guys, he merrily noted the insurance that paid him off either way.) Trying to prevent some foreclosures on people who could pay their mortgage at a normal rate isn't a bad idea.
If NPR can do decent short form reporting on some of this, the tv news people could manage. It shouldn't all be on Colbert and Stewart to ask some tough questions and point out that the people who helped cause the mess are not exactly shunned.
@The Foulness
The problem is far too complex to be reduced to "It's X's fault". If there hadn't been any mortgage defaults, then the companies investing in CDOs would have happily chugged along, making profits hand over fist. The CDSs never would have been called and none of us would have ever paid attention to any of it.
Ultimately, almost everyone can share in the blame. The Fed shouldn't have kept interest rates so low, which forced investors to find new ways to get higher returns. Mortgage lenders shouldn't have made loans that they knew people wouldn't be able to pay. People should have thought harder about the obligations they were taking on when they signed those mortgages. The regulators should have been paying more attention, both to the housing bubble and the CDS market. The media should have been scrutinizing all of this much more closely. There's a lot that went wrong and now almost everyone is getting screwed to some degree. It's just that it hurts a lot more for some than others.
I think Cramer got at the crux of this when he said "there's a market for [this kind of faux-reporting]." CNBC knew full well that no one would watch if it was Jim Lehrer up there, and that's our collective fault.
But look, only 250,000 people watch CNBC. I'm sure only a small percentage of them actually take Cramer at his word and invest in these companies, so how irresponsible were people really being? The real issue (that I thought Stewart made well) is what we've all been told forever: the responsible thing to do is put your money in a 401k or an IRA. Be more aggressive with your investments when you're young and get more conservative as you age. People who were doing the responsible thing, putting in the max every month, diversifying, etc. are the ones who got hosed here, and they didn't deserve it. They made a good-faith effort, they thought they had the info they needed, and there was no way for them to know that they were being robbed.
I think the real anger here should be directed at the government/regulators. I can't really blame greedy traders for taking advantage of a system where the cops are asleep at the wheel and the system is rigged to favor greed and irresponsibility. The SEC has been criminally incompetent when it comes to enforcement. That's what we should really be angry about.
...ordinary Americans share none of the upside of those bubbles because they don't own corporate stock, but as taxpayers, they subsidize the downside.
This is absolutely true.
And you may as well add in all the institutional investors like pension funds because they generally can't make quick moves with their investments. They just sit there and get creamed.
It all adds up to the middle class taking the bricks, again and again and again.
@TNC
As a financial advisor not too long ago, I can say the animals in us you are dealing with are fear and greed. People fear for their futures and are looking for certainty wherever they can get it. People are always on the hunt to get rich quick as well.
But I take exception to the premise that we have access to Street Knowledge and should even look to it. The street is a jungle. Should we really aspire to that set of values? That's the problem with Wall Street and the "Survival of the Fittest" types. Their values are that of the jungle predator. It's the problem not the solution.
Some of this probably has to do with the oddities of the American tax system:
Canada (where I am from and invest), does not have a mortgage deductible. Instead the sale of a principle residence doesn't face capital gains tax. It makes a structural difference.
Unless they're the kind of fraud who moves around constantly, shamans and faith healers have to answer to their communities. If they screw up, they pay for it.
No one is holding the Cramers of the world responsible. The pundits who told everyone to buy, buy now, put a new line of credit on your house, the markets only ever go up are still selling their advice and still getting high ratings. The people - You, me, and every one else reading this blog - created a class of media talking-heads who were assumed to never really be responsible for anything they said. We never held them responsible for their statements, and they have become irresponsible. Because they could.
I feel bad for the guy.
Maybe I'm just too softhearted, but I think he believed his own line - that he was doing something helpful, funny and entertaining by letting his viewers peek behind the curtain and see what the traders were thinking day to day, about stocks, and about the market.
And then one day this guy comes out and says really loudly, in public that you are hurting people, hurting your viewers, making things worse. and maybe, at least a litte, to blame for the collapse of the global financial system.
And at least partly, you think he's right. but you still have to get up in the morning and go back to your job - jumping up and down, making funny noises and telling people about who's up and who's down that day.
I think I'd skip the monring talk shows too.
Almost everyone can share in the blame, but a relative few bear a much larger share than the others.
I think a lot of the media issues coming out right now have to do with the double-edged sword of access. Over and over you hear Cramer talking about how he interviewed all these bigshot CEOs and that he was just reporting what they said. Getting people with power and money to talk is not often an easy thing to do. If a program wants to continue to have that kind of access, there is always a tension between flat out reporting what people say and checking the background. This is why shows like 60 Minutes have become justifiably famous because they have simultaneously managed to maintain access to amazing sources while oftentimes calling those same sources on their shit. When a program doesn't have that kind of talent, it's all too easy to fall into the trap of access. They get a scoop, interview someone important and feel really good about themselves. Maybe they don't push too hard and later they get another scoop. It's a downward spiral from there.
With all that said, it doesn't let news organizations off the hook. Becoming a mouthpiece for the powerful is lazy journalism because you don't have to do any real work, just let people come on and say their bit. I'm hoping that after the debacles of the Iraq War and the current financial crisis, the media finds its collective balls, but I'm not going to hold my breath. It's going to take an awful lot of soul searching.
"What madness has led us to hand off our shields and put our future in the hands of shaman and faith-healers?"
Haven't we always done this? Doesn't every "faith" tradition and religion depend on it?
Jordan,
The consolidated US mainstream media isn't likely to find it's collective balls any time soon. Anyway, where will those journalists come from? Outside of independent media, who in the US is doing any significant journalism anymore?
The truth about Iraq will be told. It just won't be told by Americans using American sources.
Canada (where I am from and invest), does not have a mortgage deductible. Instead the sale of a principle residence doesn't face capital gains tax. It makes a structural difference.
Not only the tax preferences but other government incentives to get people to own their own homes. I know some disagree, but I think owning a home is a good thing, so there is a balancing act. If owning housing is something considered good and the government wants to encourage it, the risk is that too much encouragement results in a housing boom which creates a bubble.
The tax code also provides incentive to obtain housing debt rather than other kinds of debt. So there is an advantage to buying a car with a second mortage rather than through an ordinary car loan. So people piled up mortgage debt to replace debts in which interest can't be deducted.
TPM makes a key point:
So it's about "us" in the sense that we're all complicit in the organization of the economy, but in really important ways, CNBC is exactly an outlet of and for the wealthy. It has wider influence in the creation of experts and celebrities and in feeding the aspirations of people who are never going to have this kind of money, but we have to consider really broadly who it's for and what place it fills in the media ecosystem.
This is all very selective. Numerous CEO's of popular companies went on CNBC touting the same bullshit but because you liked their products, you sent the links to your friends. A prime example would be the asinine assertion made by Steve Jobs that the new IPhone was 5 years ahead of the market. The "tech" expert on CNBC sat there going;This is some scoop...
Nobody with a cursory knowledge of telecommunications would believe that.
Without wanting to go on a rant about ridiculously overpriced "designer" tech goods contributing to peoples inability to meet other more pressing costs, it's still necessary to acknowledge that banks have been failing for over a year now.
It is also necessary to state the convenient timeline of this populist/counter populist drivel. A couple of weeks after Santelli went off on his asinine tirade comes the patronising Jon"Im a comedian gais" Stewart with his latest MURROW moment.
Did Santelli bring it on CNBC? Were people unaware pre-rant that CNBC had been wrong for years?
And what on earth is wrong with Americans thinking that they could actually make money in other ways? Curious ramble from Jon towards the end.
CNBC also has a tiny audience. There is a reason for this(see above)I have never taken Cramer seriously. His picks always pop up for a few hours-2days and die a death.
"......when you try to break it down to "nobody gets a house for free" and that you're buying into the right-wing baloney that has tried to blame this financial meltdown on poor people ....."
I may be misreading him, but I didn't get that sense from him.
It's bad enough that there is a financial meltdown, but what is at least as bad for the people who got sucked into this because it looked like it might work out is that now they are stuck with a huge wound on their credit. That may even be the seven-year wound of a bankruptcy. Getting the blame for the collapse of the world is small potatoes for them compared with that. And his point holds on that - don't buy a watch of the arm of some guy on the corner, and if you do, it's on you.
That all may be valid, but it's really not good enough for me. The question now is what to with/for/about a bunch of people who have taken this kind of a hit. How is it good for us to have this going on? I am willing to bail out people who made stupid or hopeful or greedy or however you want to characterize these house purchase decisions in order to save the property values in this country - at least my part of it. And the same holds for the people - I don't want a population of financial broken people.
Thanks Jim. You basically said what would have said. If you want to read what I think of blaming poor people for the meltdown, my record is pretty clear:
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/debunking_the_blame_the_negroes_conspiricy_theory.php
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/matt_taibbi_sons_byron_york.php
Ta-Nehisi,
"I don't know much about the financial world. I come to this equipped solely with the weaponry I was deeded by the streets"
That's a key point, about the benefit of hands-on, real-world experience. I made a related point recently elsewhere, that some of our current economic troubles are due to too few of our elites having that sort of hands-on experience ("Lessons from Brooklyn's New Economy"). For example, your father owns his own business, right? If he's like most small businessmen, I'm guessing he's wary about taking on too much debt. If more Wall Street chiefs came from that sort of background, more of them might have thought twice about levering up their companies 30-to-1.
I think DanS has confused faith for an incorrect conclusion based on observation. People don't trust Jim Cramer of something they can't see, he's on CNBC ostensibly because he's made a lot of money in the stock market and because he gives good video. People trusted his advice because of his reputation. Faith, on the other hand, requires something a little more, as it is the belief in something when there is nothing to point at -- which is what is in play whether you believe in intelligent design or a purely naturalist school of thought.
I notice many posters here harbor deep seated resentments towards those of us who do believe in God. It gives one pause to wonder what kind of people demand tolerance and respect for their beliefs while simultaneously trashing the belief systems of others just because they are different.
While we're asking questions about how we got to the place we're at, I think part of the explanation will come from our adoption of a "right here, right now" morality. In other words, my definition of what is good is based on what's good for me "right here, right now".
But hey, what do I know? According to a lot of people who post here, boomers like me are the cause for everything from 9/11 to global warming, to feminine itching.
why?
greed ignorance fear doubt
people want to be rich and they want to believe that the man on the teevee is telling them the secrets of how
people want to believe in the man in the sky who hears their prayers, too
Maybe the most important thing that Stewart said was that people have to remember that it's work that creates wealth, even for capitalists.
At US News, James Pethokoukis attacked Stewart for this, finding the right wing pony in all the mess: Americans have become an investor class, you see, which is "Why Jon Stewart Really Attacked Jim Cramer."
LOL -- somebody needs to watch more TV.
But there is an important argument to be had there: there are people who work for their money; there are people whose money works for them; and there are people who get OTHER people's money to make them rich -- without any risk, and once in awhile, without any actual work, either.
In the end, what makes 30:1 leverage a scam isn't that compound interest is evil. It's not. Capitalism is one of the great engines of human freedom and happiness, because wealth can make work more valuable. (If you doubt that, try using a hand tool to do a power tool's job.)
What makes 30:1 leverage a scam, and what made Stewart's takedown of Cramer so ... TRUE, is that Stewart realizes that when "wealth" is so far ahead of what work PRODUCES, somebody is full of it.
I think the anonymous fellow above me nailed it. And that was the main point of Stewarts comments.
And the "douche-borough" zinger in the end was HI-larious! He Nailed It!
contrary to what you wrote, CNBC's ratings have gone down since stewart's attacks, not up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/13/jim-cramer-cnbc-ratings-d_n_174873.html
Dustin, way above, makes a good point about enabling. And if you don't grow your own food, but trust growers and grocers, you have no right to cvomplain about pesticides and poisons in what you eat. Exploitative child labor in factories? C'mon people, raise sheep on the roof and knit your own. Trust is overrated, anyway. Me? I'm armed to the teeth. Or at least I would be if I accepted Dustin's argument about the right basis of society for a second.
Honestly I've always looked at those shows on CNBC as like Entertainment Tonight for Wall Street. They're just a propaganda tool. The problem is (as Stewart correctly pointed out) they don't present themselves as such.
While I enjoy watching Cramer every night, one must remember the show is primarily entertainment. The financial networks exist to promote their advertisers financial and investment products. Who would expect them to warn about the credit bubble or coming Washington national debt collapse which will destroy much of the remaining private wealth in America today or what this will do to the dollar, the stock market, bonds, gold or the real estate market?
China is now worried about their dangerous over investment in US Treasury obligations. Washington ’s long-term choice is either repudiation or monetization. For monetization to be effective, the depreciation in the dollar would have to be substantial and this in turn would dramatically raise prices of imports for American consumers which would mean a tremendous drop in foreign imports. Debt monetization would cause more disruption to exporting nations than selective repudiation of Treasury debt.
The Campaign to Cancel the Washington National Debt By 12/22/2013 Constitutional Amendment is starting now in the U.S. See: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=67594690498&ref=ts
Thanks,
Ron with 30 plus years in the investment business and banking industry.
But I couldn't stop wondering the sort of nation takes its most crucial advice from a guy who throws cows through his legs?
Are you implying that anyone who throws cows through his legs shouldn't be taken seriously? What does a superficial thing like that have to do with whether you should choose to take crucial advice from somebody?
What makes Cramer a charlatan--and his followers rubes--isn't the fact that he throws things between his legs. It's the fact that substantively, his show is a bunch of BS.
Honing in on Cramer's morning DJ schtick as a means of belittling him or the people who followed his advice reminds me of Republicans who attack Obama for not always wearing a suit jacket in the Oval Office. All that stuff doesn't matter one way or another.
T-N, I took Jon Stewart's point to be different. Jim Cramer is a journalist, and not only does journalism carry responsibility, but it holds a promise to actually provide good information to people. Having a position at CNBC or the Atlantic gets you things that normal people don't get- you literally get a press pass. And the obligation you have in return for that privilege, that advantage, that special view of the interior of institutions and opportunity to interview CEOs, is that you need to use your power well, and use it to further the agenda of good information, not the agenda of the people you're covering. That's why what Judith Miller did was wrong- she stopped serving the interest of information, and started passing off one person's propaganda as "news"- which we poor un-accessed citizens expect to be fact-checked. If you got something factual wrong in one of your long-form articles, would "sorry, my source lied to me" be an acceptible excuse? No. You're supposed to check up on your sources. So is Jim Cramer- but he didn't.
I heard Stewart saying that CNBC could be a great watchdog, and being pissed that they aren't even interested in that. It could help keep both the financial industry and the regulators honest, the ultimate job of journalism. But CNBC doesn't even TRY. Stewart has a different platform, but his job is to keep people honest, too, by making fun of them. With Cramer he crossed over into serious journalism territory, because Cramer and CNBC have just let that field lie fallow.
When I read in a newspaper, or magazine, or see on TV that, say, beer sales are higher than they've ever been (I just made that up), believing it doesn't make me a dunce. It makes me a person who doesn't have access to special information and has to rely on other people to tell me about it. And when those people lie to me day after day, it really pisses me off. I have a choice between believing that what I see on TV- from presidential press conferences to car-chase footage- has some truth to it, or only believing what I can verify with my own personal eyes and people I personally know and trust. We can't function in the modern world with only the information we can personally verify. I mean, how can you sign a contract on that basis? Buy a house? Well, the seller says there's insulation in the walls, but how do we REALLY know?
So yeah, some media outlets have a lot more credibility than others. But even the National Enquirer is held to truth standards. CNBC shouldn't be an exception. I think this story was about the deep, painful, and vividly real consequences in other people's lives of lazy journalism.
The financial networks exist to promote their advertisers financial and investment products. Who would expect them to warn about the credit bubble or coming Washington national debt collapse which will destroy much of the remaining private wealth in America today or what this will do to the dollar, the stock market, bonds, gold or the real estate market?
Because they are given special protections under the law to do this. If they aren't going to do it, then the special privileges they enjoy as journalists should be stripped and they should be treated as entertainers in the eyes of the law.
Basic problem.. (with us) is that too many people have come to believe in faith-based-financials--just believe us and it will all work out..
Faith may be appropriate in many places (believe in yourself and those you know and trust personally) but when you are faced with large, complex, hard decisions that are life-altering--too many people have run away and fled the problem of reducing uncertainty through work and thought and instead just placed their faith in people who they didn't actually know at all.
The biggest part of Stewart's critique for me is that CNBC has positioned itself as experts to fit into this category--but its expertise was more about bluster than analysis.. Yes, many ordinary folks have neglected to question this expertise.. and they thus should suffer part of the blame.. but before you start blaming the followers, I think those who have led you in a wrong direction should be outted as frauds.. if only as a lesson for people to question those who appear as authorities, but who actually have no basis for that authority other than their ability to be on the Tee-Vee.
I work at a financial services firm where we have CNBC playing on a flat-screen tv all day - so I basically have been watching CNBC 5 days a week for years. I can tell you that while I thought the Stewart takedown was hilarious, his clips were of course heavily edited. In fact, Cramer's last big blow-up was when he said that everyone with a 401k who was close to retirement should completely get out of the market because it was going to collapse (which it did - dropped like 400pts the next day - everyone blamed him).
Like most fields, finance is full of arcane but important knowledge that affects how information (say, from CNBC) is processed. What a hedge fund trader takes from CNBC is much different from what a retiree watching at home takes from it. It's like when I read your blog, I totally get your posts about race and football, but with the WoW stuff, I am clueless - the nuance is lost, the conclusions that are clear to you are undiscernable to me because I have never played an RPG (is that even what they are called?). My point being, I would say that 99.999% of finance industry folks "know" to ignore Mad Money because it is "obvious" that the show is meaningless filler - who would put real dollars at risk based on this hyperactive dude jumping around pressing buttons and throwing stuffed animals? If you have been trained to build models, analyze comp sets, evaluate management, and generally take dozens of steps to make a single investment, it is clear that Jim Cramer is just a financial Howard Stern, or maybe Oprah for white guys. But it seems that CNBC has been successful selling to the non-finance world this idea that Jim Cramer is an "expert" on the market. Or maybe, the non-finance world just needed a straw man to tear down, and Jim Cramer was it.
We in the finance world fucked things up pretty bad, but Jim Cramer had pretty much nothing to do with it.
Thank you TNC; it's encouraging to see that i understood tyour point.
One last thing. I can understand the exposed nerve endings when it comes to asshats trying to pin all this on black people. Scape-goating has consequences for the scape-goats. Tactically it may make sense to respond and refute, but strategically it's a bad move. In the long run the best answer is to roll your eyes and leave the busllshit lie on the side of the road to die. It's the equivalent of not feeding the trolls. In this case the scape-goating is not really playing very well out in broader society anyway; the people who are peddling this have basically lost all their credibility already by being so wrong on so many other issues.