I Love John Stewart

I just finished watching the much publicized Cramer vs Stewart interview, and I am even more in love with John Stewart than before. He destroyed Cramer, Cramer knew it, and knew he was blatantly wrong on every level. Here are a few excerpts:

Stewart: CNBC could be an incredibly powerful tool of illumination for people that believe that there are two markets: One that has been sold to us as long term: "Put your money in 401ks. Put your money in pensions and just leave it there. Don't worry about it. It's all doing fine." Then, there's this other market; this real market that is occurring in the back room. Where giant piles of money are going in and out...it's dangerous, it's ethically dubious, and it hurts that long term market.

So what it feels like to us...is like we are capitalizing your adventure by our pension and our hard earned money. And that it is a game that you know is going on. But you go on television as a financial network and pretend isn't happening.

...

Stewart: [CNBC] whose side are they on? It feels like they have to reconcile as their audience the Wall Street traders...these guys' companies were on a Sherman's March through their companies, financed by our 401ks, and all the incentives of their companies were for short term profit. And they burned the fucking house down with our money and walked away rich as hell, and you guys knew that that was going on.

...

Stewart: Isn't that part of the problem? Selling this idea that you don't have to do anything: "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? When are we going to realize in this country that our wealth is work. That we're workers and by selling this idea that of, "Hey man, I'll teach you how to be rich." How is that any different than an infomercial?

Cramer: Well, I think that your goal should always be to try to expose the fact that there is no easy money. I wish I had found Madoff...

Stewart: But there are literally shows called Fast Money.

Cramer: I think that people... [Audience laughs] There's a market for it and you give it to them.

Stewart: There's a market for cocaine and hookers!

...

Cramer: But it's difficult to have a reporter to say I just came from an interview with Hank Whats-his-face and he lied his darn fool head off. It's difficult. I think it challenges the boundaries.

Stewart: Yeah. I'm under the assumption, and maybe this is purely ridiculous, that you don't just take their word for it at face value-- that you actually then go around and try and figure it out... Maybe we could remove the financial expert and the "In Cramer we Trust" and start getting back to fundamentals on reporting as well, and I can go back to making fart noises and funny faces.



Excellent.

Steve