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Friday, March 13, 2009
The Unmasking Of the CNBC Circus
Last night's interview is a must see for anyone who ever gets their investment (or any other kind) of advice from CNBC. While after this interview Cramer's future at the network is not so certain, maybe, just maybe, CNBC will reevaluate its role in the financial media community.
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Question: In the clip Jon Stewart showed, Cramer was effectively saying he and others associated with him manipulated the price of Apple stock prior to the launch of the iPhone. Isn't that illegal? Isn't he basically admitting to some sort of securities fraud?
Definitely a lot of sacrificial lambs put up on the altar this week... Madoff, Cramer, possibly CNBC. Seems orchestrated.
Wrong man for the times. Cramer set up an exaggerated personality that hit an emotional resonance during bull market times. Now that suddenly everyone is very serious (losing money does that to you), he looks too clownish. Actually, to call him "clownish" is perhaps one of the more generous treatments.
Cyberspace's version of tarred and feathered. Done.
I think it would be great if we actually had news media that told the truth and didn't worry about what our governmental leaders thought or said. Cramer was like a child talking with the principal after being called in for some offense... how sad. It's time for the average American to pay attention to our leaders, call them out when they don't tell the truth and especially, when they are leading us down a path with candy and roses. Let's face it, in a Capitalist society, there are failures and winners. I think it is just unfair to rig the gig all the way down.
This was ridiculous moral grandstanding from Stewart. Yes, CNBC has a lot of entertainers, stock touts and doesn't do much investigative journalism. So what? Where does it say CNBC has to be a sacred source of unbiased wisdom and truth? Jon Stewart (journo masquerading as an entertainer, the inverse of Cramer) certainly isn't infallible. CNBC generates profits for GE and still can be a valuable service--at times--for people willing to filter through the noise. If you invest based on everything you hear on TV, you deserve to lose it all. Stewart would have us belive financial entertainment news is equivalent to cocaine, as a sop to people who stupidly take all Cramer buy recs at face value and lost their shirts. Individual responsibility is a foreign concept.
Cramer is an idiot and for once I think Stewart is also way off the mark. All these people that think "hedge funds" (a very, VERY loose term for partnerships) are this evil cadre of swindling daytraders are completely misinformed. Guys like Chanos, Paulson, Bass, etc are hedge fund managers and they were nailing perpetrators of financial fraud to the wall. They have been trying to warn people for years about the excesses in the system, and yet everyone wants to vilify them. HORSESHIT. I'm sick of ignorance in media, government, and the public. It makes me want to get the hell out of this sinking ship of a country.
Anonymous 2:24,
Yesterday I saw the first article blaming "wolf packs" of short sellers for pushing the markets to 12-year lows. Expect short-seller villification to increase, too. I trade short and long, though. Maybe I'll have to make at least 50.1% of my profits from the long side or else face confiscatory taxation for being "unpatriotic".
Ahh, how people do hate to hear the truth.
Ok, Cramer and CSNBC aren't very smart, but let's shoot Stewart for saying it out loud.
I'm not anonymous. I'm zak822.
I thought we had the Wall Street Journal and the FT to do investigative journalism? CNBC doesn't have any journalists, it has market commentators. The WSJ has exposed and brought down companies in the past... blame them for "missing" this.
My guess is that most of the people who have posted here do not watch Mad Money. Cramer actually has been very negative on the market for the past year. He was the one who said nine months ago that the Fed "knew nothing" and had to be more aggressive lowering rates (he was right). A few months ago he advised his viewers to take their money out of the stock market if they needed it in the next five years. He is a democrat but has been critical of the Obama administration and has proposed his own plans to fix the banking and housing systems. He's not really a cheerleader for the bulls. If anything, he sort of rides the tide, whichever way it is going. But if someone who watches CNBC doesn't realize that even the smartest market forecasters are only correct about 60% of the time, then they are setting themselves up for disappointment. That all said, Cramer did a terrible job explaining himself. Stewart definitely had him on the defensive. Maybe Stewart will come on Mad Money and give Cramer home court advantage.
Cramer had the audacity to give a critique of Obama's tax/stimulus policy. This is what caused the stalinist Mr. Stewart to channel his inner Edward R Murrow. Had Cramerica the clown stayed mum on Obama, Stewart would never had engaged him.
ANon @ 7:35... making the rounds I see.
Go look for your conspiracy theory elsewhere. Cramer got it because it made he fanned the story for publicity, and got burned when he tried to sit on it.
Cramer is a loudmouth who crafts his show around his ego pangs, not the interests of his viewers -- hence exaggerated theater in place of cogent analysis. He doens't need the paycheck, just the attention. It was his sanctimoniousness and the way he egged a fight with the big kid, that elicited the lashing.
CNBC doesn't have to be an honest impartial news source, but we'd all be better off. That was Stewart's point. I can't argue with it.
I really think Stewart is the one that comes off looking like the jerk here. How the hell is Bear Stearns Jim Cramer's fault? Jim Cramer acts like a bozo but I think he acts in good faith. Stewart was on the pulpit and wanted to rant and rave and didnt give Cramer the chance to answer any questions. Virtually every financial publication made the same mistakes that CNBC made. Jim Cramer didnt recognize what was going on, but how many really did. Maybe we all sensed something was wrong and thought it could be bad - but most of us grew up investing in the years from 1982-1999 when the equity market was up in all but two years. And in those two years the market was only down single digit percentages. What do you learn in that environment? Buy on dips! Clearly that was a mistake, in hindsight, but to complain that a network that grew up in that environment deserves a substantial share of the blame is ridiculous. To blame them for putting the management of the companies that perpetuated the bubble on the air means you should blame anyone anywhere that reported on them. At the end of the day, Stewart got his moment in the sun, but I lost a lot of respect for how he handled it. Wonder how his portfolio has done to make him that mad! Cramer came off much more intelligent than he does on his show.
Hey, Cramer finally got some long overdue accountability...and he's very slippery at reinventing his track record.
I only wish the Daily Show would find the clip of Maria Bartarmomo defending exec pay packages in the hundreds of millions by saying they put it back into the economy by tipping waiters at restaruants, buying boats and going on vacations. What a shill!! I was so mad I had steam coming out my ears.
This episode is not finished. Stewart is on to the deepcapture.com story.
Anon at 10:28 PM - Perhaps Maria's soft spot for execs putting money back in the economy by tipping at restaurants is from her early career as a hat check/ cloak room girl at a restaurant. I heard that is where she was "discovered".
Before you get too outraged on Cramer's behalf, remember that he didn't even try to defend himself or CNBC. He conceded all Stewart's points.
Speaking of personal responsibility, why all this sympathy for a guy who lashed out at Stewart when he started making fun of CNBC. Everyone else had the, --what's the word?--foresight to keep their head down--even that pathetic blowhard Rick Santelli had the good sense to bail on Jon Stewart, albeit only after he accepted the Daily Show invite. But Cramer insists on going in after him, like a non-swimmer diving into a rip tide.
A friend of mine had a great point after Jim's comments the other evening. He said, "It's Jim Cramer". Enough said...
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