Friday, March 13, 2009

Jon Stewart Attacks Jim Cramer (and Markets)

Well, since most everyone relies on Memeorandum these days for the hot/buzz stories of the day, here's my obligatory* post on Jon Stewart's "takedown" yesterday of financial shock-jock Jim Cramer on the Daily Show.

By the looks of things, conservatives are afraid to touch this story, but James Pethokoukis has the best post on Stewart's ideological underpinnings:

There was a lively exchange last night on The Daily Show between Jon Stewart and CNBC's Jim Cramer, in which Stewart hammered Cramer and the network for being subservient to Wall Street and not alerting viewers to the coming meltdown. Cramer and the network can defend themselves, but what became clear to me is that Stewart really doesn't believe in the idea of a stock market where individuals can go to invest their money and build wealth over the long term. This, I think, is a revealing quote:

Isn't that part of the problem, selling this idea that you don't have to do anything? Anytime you sell people the idea that, sit back and you'll get 10 to 20 percent on your money, don't you always know that that's going to be a lie ...
So what is Stewart suggesting, that we "workers" just save insane gobs of money that we squirrel away into low-yielding savings accounts and rely on those savings and Social Security for our retirement? Even plenty of Democrats believe that, which is why many are pushing universal savings accounts. Now, of course, investors tend to be more conservative than folks without investment portfolios. So maybe that is what really bugs the liberal Stewart, as well as those Dems who want to get rid of 401(k) plans.
More at the link.

Megan McArdle's worth a read too: "Ultimately, I find Stewart disturbing because in some sense he's doing exactly what Cramer is - making powerful statements, and then when he gets called on him, retreating into the claim that well, you can't really expect him to act as if he were being taken seriously."

*Obligatory posts made famous by Allahpundit at Hot Air.

6 comments:

Dave said...

"Isn't that part of the problem, selling this idea that you don't have to do anything?"

And Jon Stewart does exactly what to earn his millions?

Nuff said.

-Dave

AmPowerBlog said...

Thanks Dave!

Dave said...

Dr. Douglas,

Many people are unaware of this, but Jim Cramer and Larry Kudlow were once business partners.

It appears the Obamanista attack machine is now turning its attention on Kudlow:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2009/03/13/la-times-columnist-cheap-shots-cnbc-s-larry-kudlow

Cramer is a diehard dem, as such he still has yet to come to grips with the fact that libs will eat their own.

Kudlow is not similarly afflicted.

I would be willing to (almost) wager the farm that Larry would eat Stewart's lunch, breakfast, and dinner in a true one-on-one.

LOL-Even though I am not normally a pay-per-view type, I would pony up to see it nonetheless. :-)

-Dave

dave in boca said...

I'm no financial wizard, but at one time actually passed the NASD 7 & 63 exams to work for Drexel, Burnham, Lambert. A while back, Stewart had a ditz named Gerri Willis of CNN on and asked her a question about puts. GW gave exactly the WRONG answer and Stewart praised her for her brilliance.

Jon Stewart is dumber than a bucket of hair on anything that has to do with serious pursuits other than making fun of people he doesn't agree with. I just wish Kudlow would come on that fake news show and deflate that phoney empty suit even further.

Anonymous said...

Kudlow and Cramer are both clowns. If you guys want to follow their investment advice, fine with me. Basically, with Bush in the WH, Kudlow was a perma-bull and now with Obama it's perma-bear. Any analysis you get from him is colored by politics. You want to trust that?

BTW, all the little Galtlings really put a hurt on the market this week. Maybe getting the dead wood out of the system helped. Or maybe it was the stimulus package.

Ema Nymton said...

.

Mr Stewart hammered the TV financial 'news' networks for being subservient to Wall Street, their lack of over sight, and not alerting viewers to the coming meltdown. The world wide 'free market' financial shenanigans were on display for longer than ten years. The fix was in, with the TV financial 'news' networks as active enabling players.

The financial 'news' networks claim only after the fact, to have been unaware of the criminal/unethical/amoral behavior! They have been called to account for their complicity in the matter.

The issue is the fixed rigged game that allowed the grand level of theft of wealth with little or next to none oversight. It is quite telling that the corporate 'news' networks are not asking the questions.

One does have to ask why a comedy show host is leading the issue of asking for accountability?

____

Where are the conservative university professors standing up for the orthodoxy of fixed international free markets systems?

Ema Nymton

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