All of the “Chicago Tea Party” websites/Facebook pages have had a right-leaning feel to them. I suppose that’s more of the right painting (claiming) Santelli’s message as being a partisan thing than the left. Too bad. 
Stewart wouldn’t have attacked Cramer if Cramer hadn’t criticized Obama. I know that is true because I heard it in a no-spin zone. 
Rick never claimed that the banks that lost money weren’t losers just like the idiots who lost money by signing a bad mortgage without having someone not interested in selling them a mortgage look over it. I think his stance is that they are all losers, they all deserve to be bankrupt, none of them deserve bailing out with my tax money, cause I was working hard and putting away while those assholes were buying 65’ TVs for their 5 bedroom mansions.
Jon is a hypocrite when he tries to make it look like the people who couldn’t pay hold any less blame then the banks that offered them mortgages. He is also a hypocrite when he claims that a comedian like Cramer is somehow to blame for the money people lost. At the end of every Mad Money episode there is a disclaimer that says loud and clear that Cramer is not your financial adviser and is not responsible for any money you loose taking his advice. Its a TV show, don’t believe everything on TV.
He failed to mention them in his rant.
I don’t think you understand what hypocrite means. Stewart may be wrong, and I think he (and many others) overplay the predatory lending angle, but he’s not a hypocrite. Not unless he’s been making the loans himself.
Yeah, that’s been pointed out repeatedly in this thread. As I said, nobody should be accepting Cramer’s advice uncritically, and if so, they are stupid and misguided. The point remains that he’s a bullshit artist, though. Stewart never said Cramer was responsible for losing anyone’s money. He said Cramer has given some very bad advice, so it’s wrong of him (and of CNBC) to present his advice as oracular.
I don’t know if this is true, but it appears there are some reports of the Rick Santelli’s rant as being a setup.
And here is an article about Jim Cramer. Again, I can’t vouch for it, but, if any of this is remotely true, he should be indicted.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/5/16720/74815/703/705113
It looks like Jon Stewart has opened up a big can of worms. Good for him.
A big point of Stewart slagging CNBC has been the little motto “In Cramer We Trust” which is rather at odds with the fine print disclaimer.
If people listen to Stewart and take him seriously, it’s because he’s managed to earn their respect. People listen to Cramer and take him seriously because he presents himself as someone to be taken seriously despite the wacky sound effects. Remember when he made the talk show rounds when he was right about some prediction? He was crowing it to the skies. The message from that was “See? I predicted this! You should listen to me!”
If you want to see how Cramer’s advice performs in the market go to http://www.fool.com they frequently bash him for giving bad advice. But he should not be held liable for it, be prevented from giving it, or be bashed for giving it. He is a TV persona with an entertaining show that aims to get people interested in investing, which I consider an admirable goal.
Nobody, including Stewart, has said Cramer should be legally liable for his advice or that he should be prevented from giving it. The jokes are about how Cramer and his colleagues present themselves, and are presented by CNBC, as market experts. If you sell yourself as an expert and you’re wrong all the time, are you really an expert or just good at promoting yourself? And is it right for a network to position its analysts as hyperskilled when they’ve been wrong on matter that are so huge? In this thread (and another new one), some people have accused Stewart of mixing comedy and seriousness, and then hiding behind the comedy. I think CNBC is mixing financial analysis with entertainment and then hiding behind the “it’s all entertainment” disclaimer. That’s a more serious fault in my opinion.
In that particular one, no, he didn’t. If you have the time… what’s your response to his comments in this video?
I could have an entertaining fishing show that gets people interested in fishing, but if I tell viewers the correct way to fish is to roll around in bait, put hooks through your skin, then jump in the water, I think people might take an issue with that.
As a [soon-to-be] lawyer, I wholeheartedly agree.
Again, you’re 100% right.
This is where you lose me. What about Cramer’s position as a TV pundit make him immune from criticism? Marketing the show with “In Cramer We Trust” seems to invite the very criticism of the Cramer, and CNBC, that Stewart has been leveling the past couple weeks.
-Piker
If that show went on the air the end result would probably be more people paying attention to fishing, which would probably good for the fishing industry and the current fishermen(the normal ones who fish with rods or dynamite or whatever). I guess we’ll just have to disagree on whether the issue is with the person telling people to do those things or the people actually doing them.
raises hand
The issue is with the expert telling non-experts to do things in a way that is 1) wrong and 2) hurts people (either physically or financially).
If you hold yourself out to be an expert, you should expect your advice to be criticized. That’s how expertise works.
When you’re talking about getting people interested in X, the implication is that they’re new to X or don’t normally have much interest in it. So you’ve got a guy who they’ll listen to about X, the reasonable assumption is that they will think that what he says about X is proper and correct. The number of people who engage in full-on critical thinking and do their own research independent of the guy who got them interested in X is very small.
If Cramer is the only guy I’ll bother to listen to about investing and he says to buy Bear Stearns at a time when it would actually be a very dumb idea, and a non-CNBC analyst who bores me could have told me that, then he’s giving bad advice which I have no reason to mistrust. That’s screwing with people’s money. Sure, it’s my fault for being lazy, but he’s presenting himself as an entertaining expert, not an expert entertainer. He seems credible if you look past the silly sound effects, he wants to be credible, people treat him as credible…why shouldn’t I think he’s credible?
There’s a possible parallel to be drawn here in that a lot of people use Stewart as their only news source and might be inclined to trust him when he’s really BSing. The difference is that Stewart regularly says in the show that it’s a fake news show and it’s all just jokes and he’s not to be taken seriously. Cramer…has a fine-print legal disclaimer at the end of his show, and we all know how many people studiously read those.
It would be good for the current industry and fisherman, but bad for the people taking the bad advice, who are going to get hurt. That’s the bit that’s gets glossed over by some of these shows, and it’s essentially what Stewart was calling attention to.
Here is what one of the contributors to the fool has to say about Cramer, I generally agree with him. And I simply can not work up any sympathy whatsoever for people that get their only news from TDS and their only financial advice from MM. They gotta learn somehow, if it wasn’t the stock market it would’ve been some guys selling speakers off the back of a truck, TANSTAAFL.
But then why should we accord any wisdom to the people giving out this advice, or think they have a solution? That’s the issue at question here.
Exactly. Stewart’s show doesn’t represent itself as “The last word in news” or “Where we present world events in a fair and balanced way”. Stewart doesn’t pretend he’s something he’s not, though he does subvert expectations by being smarter and more trenchant than he needs to be. He could host a 23-minute Weekend Update, but he does more than that when he can. But he never claims to be anything more.
CNBC does the exact opposite. They promote the wisdom and insight and astute analysis of their various market men and pimp them out as experts and authorities. But when they fuck up–oh, disclaimer disclaimer, it’s all in good fun, we’re just about entertainment, don’t take us so seriously. It’s a chickenshit fallback position that’s conveniently counter to what they say to get people to watch their shows in the first place.
What I got out of Jon Stewart’s collage is that Rick and his colleagues at CNBC were going around telling people that the market is fine when actually it was heading for the toilet. And so how does Rick get off for calling those people losers? He and his colleagues weren’t the brightest bulbs either.
I’ve said this in other threads, but the people who couldn’t pay do hold less blame. If I’m a morgage officer, I should know when it’s a good idea to offer a loan and when it’s not a good idea. If someone comes up to me and tries to get a loan with insufficient income, then it’s my job to deny them the loan. I am supposed to be the expert on mortgages, not my clients.
And we see that the vast majority of the bailout money is going to the supposed “experts”, those who were assumed to know what they were doing. If they are getting most of the help, they should be prepared to assume most of the blame.
I know for a fact that I would not sign any document that indebts me for the next thirty years without reading and understanding all the fine print, just like my parents taught me. The only people holding less blame are the orphans who didn’t have parents to explain the “Always read the fine print” thing to them. There are at least two signatures on any mortgage document, and if the mortgage fails both signatories are equally responsible.
Cramer probably did lead some people to think that they could successfully time the markets and make a quick buck, but it is not the intention of his show, and those people probably sell detergent for Amway or vacuum cleaners for Kirby, they are gonna get screwed no matter what. Why pile on Cramer? What about all those sitcoms that show people living in houses and apartments they couldn’t possibly afford? They have probably caused just as many poor financial decisions as Cramer.