No other clips were shown. But Stewart said a couple of times (paraphrase): “you have become the face of this, which is unfortunate. My beef is with CNBC, not Jim Cramer.” The whole kerfluffle started with a rag on CNBC, focused on Rick Santelli, a week ago.
Will Cramer have a new episode tonight, (Fridays)? As much as I don’t like what the guy has done, I would be interested in seeing his response.
This thing is getting some serious attention. It appeared on the front page of USA Today, the Huffington Post has a huge headline devoted to it, and it has 5200+ Diggs. The White House even responded to it during today’s briefing. Gibbs said he “enjoyed it thoroughly,” but doesn’t know if the President has seen it.
I think this is a clear indication of how many people are pissed off at CNBC. Many people are glad that someone is finally calling them out for doing such a piss poor job of reporting on the crisis.
And you know what? He said almost exactly this: “We’re both snake oil salesmen to a certain extent, but we do label the show as snake oil here. Isn’t there a problem selling snake oil as vitamin tonic?” And much later he said CNBC’s posture and actions were “negligent at best and criminal at worst.”
So I hope the OP is happy. He should be.
I watched the middle segment of the interview this morning and thought, “Oh god, he didn’t let Cramer get a word in edgewise and didn’t deal with the real subject. What a waste.” I saw the aired version just now (I’m listening to the unedited interview) and I feel very differently. Stewart did occasionally get too prosecutorial with the video clips, and yes, he was sometimes on his high horse, but for the most part he was on target and did great and addressed things that have not been dealt with. I was a little surprised by how meek Cramer was, but what else was he going to say?
Like I’ve posted in this thread, and a few other places, Cramer is pretty open, on his own show, about being a showman with a gimmick. There’s nothing else you can call Mad Money. It’s gimmickry. It’s Vegas. I’m not saying that makes Cramer an honest man, but he’s upfront about the nature of what he’s doing. So if you do what Stewart did and demand he account for using this gimmick, what’s he going to say other than “This is what I get paid to do and it gets viewers?” There’s no ethical defense for it and Cramer didn’t attempt one.
For a while he tried to sell himself as being on Stewart’s (and ‘the people’s’) side, but it was pretty half-hearted. When Stewart said his show is “crazy bullshit,” all he said was “fair enough.” He offered to treat his viewers like adults, and we’ll see if he does it, but it’s really not his thing.
Cramer did make one revealing, or at least useful, statement, when he said people really came to believe, against all good sense, that the market could continue doing what it was doing forever. I’ve been saying it for a while and I think it’s true. They were making money, so they turned off their common sense. And mostly, other people paid for it. I think a lot of people are upset that happened and scared that it will eventually happen again because even the experts demonstrated so little foresight and reliability into the situation that was being created. And if people don’t understand it, regulators are too stupid to keep an eye on it and the experts can’t help themselves, there’s not much to keep this from happening again.
I found it almost painful to watch last night, but seeing the whole interview (now), it has a different tone. Frankly, I found Stewart to be not all that harsh on Cramer in the longer version. I think his point is being missed, though–perhaps not by those here, but in general. Certainly my husband, who watches CNBC religiously has missed it. He keeps saying that Cramer didn’t do a good job of explaining how “things” work to Stewart.
IMO, Stewart knows all too well how things work and showed as much. I’d like to think that Cramer was actually helping the Feds take some of this scum down, but somehow I doubt it. :dubious: I was glad to hear Stewart defend the traders who also got shafted a bit in all of this.
So, we the soccer moms and working stiffs of the world, in whom are we to believe? The financial “analysts” who seem to know fuck all? The CEOS who lie as soon as breathe? The “journalists” at CNBC who act as shills for big business and repeat those lies? The Wall Street Journal that doesn’t explain stuff in everyday language (for me, at least)?
Money in a mattress looks better all the time. :mad:
I said what I said because it would be funny. Imagine what a good video editor could do with all the programming Comedy Central shows.
I wasn’t impressed with the interview. In fact, I was disappointed. Stewart was pandering to his audience exactly as much as Cramer pandered to his and just as successfully. Look at how you are all eating it up. There wasn’t any doubt he would win. The man with the microphone always wins. The angry populist can always find a crowd to pick up the pitchforks and torches.
Did Cramer say stupid things on his show? Undoubtedly. Did Stewart find a revealing video of Cramer? Well, he didn’t find it since I had seen the whole thing before yesterday’s show. No original reporting there. Is Cramer a reporter? No. He’s not.
Whoa. That’s worthy of a full stop. Jim Cramer is not a reporter. He’s a commentator. Not at all the same thing. I don’t watch CNBC but my impression is that most of their shows are commentary rather than reporting.
Who is supposed to do reporting? The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal. The Financial Times. Fortune. Business Week. Forbes. Did they all see that this was coming? If not, aren’t they more culpable?
Or what about the SEC and the Fed and Congress and the rest of the many governmental regulators? It’s in their job descriptions to see this coming. They didn’t.
And the rating agencies and the financial analysts and the auditors and the guys responsible for due diligence also missed it.
So the SEC and the Fed and Fortune and The Wall Street Journal and Moody’s and the major networks and everybody else in the world, with a few unheard exceptions, all missed uncovering this and it’s Jim Cramer’s fault?
Crap. That’s the ugly side of after-the-fact populism. Call them all out for what everybody missed, but don’t get all high-and-mighty on one commentator. And if it’s true that the unedited version shows Cramer making a better rebuttal than what was aired on the show, then Stewart is an ass.
Just to be clear, I’ve been watching The Daily Show since the day Stewart took over. I think he and the show are brilliant. Many - many - of his segments have been the best stuff on television in years. I especially like the way he segued seamlessly from Bush to Obama and is still funny and pointed. A lot of conservatives argued that he couldn’t do it and he’s proven them wrong.
Not this interview, though. Wrong target, wrong arguments, wrong logic. I expected better of him.
And I expect to get it next week and all the weeks after. He’s that good. Just not yesterday.
I was a little surprised that Cramer didn’t make the argument that CNBC is the way it is because the audience it is catering to is not the long term buy and hold investors dumping money into the 401k, it is indeed the short term wall street create wealth by pushing money around crowd. I am definitely in the long term buy and hold category and pretty much never watch CNBC, nor do most of the people I know who are in the same position. However, the few people that i know that work on wall street have told me it is basically a staple and is on constantly. CNBC is the way they are because that is what there audience wants. Is it right…probably not, but it is like asking comedy central to start showing serious documentaries even though their audience is tuning in to laugh.
I don’t think Stewart decides how to edit his show down into TV-compatible fare. Besides, they could have chosen not to show the unedited interview.
Cramer wasn’t the right target, and even Stewart seems to agree. But Cramer is the one who got his feathers ruffled and started sniping back at Stewart. He drew the attention and made himself CNBC’s face in this little conflict.
Here’s the point I think Stewart was trying to make with those (IMO) damning clips: Cramer is smart. Cramer clearly knows the industry. And yet he’s just a commentator on the network. Shouldn’t the actual journalists, the ones who don’t have a wacky comedy show, have just as much or more knowledge of the industry?
Really, I think Cramer’s got a good show and I think he’s smart and a pretty good on-screen persona. He could be CNBC’s Daily Show if he wanted to; they certainly treat him as such. But Stewart, in digging up the clips these past few weeks, has done more investigative journalism than anyone at CNBC. And he’s just a “commentator” on politics and the media. It’s not outside the bounds of reasonability to suppose that an intelligent and “hard-hitting” guy like Cramer could aspire to the same levels of integrity.
My daughter’s college fund wouldn’t be down 25% if I’d done that.
-Joe
There’s plenty of other stuff to show that Cramer is up to his elbows in some of this crap as well. I wouldn’t expect CNBC to change a damned thing, and for precisely the reason Jorge_Burrito points out.
The question is not Cramer’s ability to “predict what the stocks should do”. What Stewart is saying is that CNBC and people like Cramer perpetuate a line of bullshit to the public created by the Wall Street bankers. They at best show themselves to be naive by taking what they are told by these executives at face value without any due diligence or at worst they are criminally complacent. And Cramer, specifically, should know better as he was a former hedge fund manager and they have him on tape talking about maipulating the markets. What Stewart is arguing for is that the news networks like CNBC should be doing their job and getting to the truth of how these Wall Street firms operate instead of sucking up to them.
Am I the only one who sayw a thought bubble go over Cramer’s head part way through the interview…
{Holy shit, he’s right, I’m a fucking asshole}
Because it seemed to me that he couldn’t defend himself and he realized that there was really no defense for himself or his network. No he isn’t the cause or anything like that, but he is complicit.
Which, if you accept Jorge_Burrito’s explanation of CNBC’s audience (and I see no reason not to), means they’re still just as culpable, because by not doing due diligence they’re screwing over the short game as well as the long.
Despite all the posts pointing this out, you still don’t get it. Cramer pretends to be a reporter. That’s the problem.
OMG! OMG! Do you think Jon Stewart reads the Dope? 
:eek: Dayyyy-UM! Dude tore Cramer a new Cramer!
And my 401k wouldn’t be down 20% as well. These churners are the worst motherfuckers out there, AFAIC. Stewart is right–we did fund their “adventure”–adventure with Beluga caviar, champagne and god knows what other symbols of material excess. I like what he said re in what universe is 30:1 a sane prospect? How did an entire network get sucked into this fairy tale of get rich quick? IMO, the network essentially acted as a shill for most of the major players in this nightmare.
WHERE were the voices of reason is what Stewart is saying–and he is holding CNBC culpable, as he should. It could be a power for reasoned investing and longterm growth. Instead, it treats money making like a game show with Monopoly money. It went for the quick and easy/dirty way to make profits in TV–appeal to ignorance and cupidity. Well, it worked for a while, but the Emperor is not wearing any clothes. CNBC is not the only one to blame, of course. But Stewart is on TV and tends to cover TV media stuff. No doubt the WSJ is just as much to blame (I don’t know, since I don’t read it).
Thank god for people like Stewart and Colbert who show the men behind the curtain. I’d like to see some indictments, and some real jail time for some of these WS fat cats.
No he doesn’t. I’ve seen the show (though I don’t watch it regularly). I’ve read his columns. He’s a commentator.
I also don’t see “all the posts” pointing out that Cramer pretends to be a reporter. I don’t see any at all.
He sure does pretend to be an advisor who knows how the market works and give good advice on how to protect yourself and make money, as well as avoid scams.
This is all just semantic dancing. It doesn’t matter what label you put on him or he puts on himself. The point is that a lot of people look to him for advice/insight/knowledge/whatever (again, nitpicking about the label just avoids the real issue). He has the knowledge and background to be of real service to those people, but instead he chooses to pass along whatever lies he’s told, he chooses to focus on entertaining to the detriment of due diligence, he chooses to toe the party line, and he tells people to not take their money out of Bear a week before it collapses.
The Cramer defenders (including himself) who quibble about what label should be put on what he does, and insist that his show is for entertainment, are missing the entire point that Stewart was making.
There is no inherent mutual-exclusivity between being entertaining and doing the due diligence to be able to know and report on what is really going on. Hell, as Jon Stewart himself demonstrates over and over, sometimes catching the lies is more entertaining than just passing them along.
The bottom line is that Cramer and CNBC could be a force for good, but instead they choose to just try to make money any way they can. Is that a failure of their responsibility? I suppose we can’t say that they are in some way obligated to do the right thing. But it’s very sad that they have (had?) the opportunity, but just dropped it. And now so many people are paying the price.