My Last Post on Cramer Versus Stewart

Jim Cramer went on Jon Stewart’s show last night. Frankly, I have no interest in watching it. I’ve grown sick and tired of Jon Stewart and his act. His reputation is a bubble and I hope someone takes it down. As usual, Megan sums up the issue nicely.
I’ll add in a few points. Jim Cramer isn’t a reporter, he’s a stock-picker and he has an after-hours show on stock-picking. The beginning of the show clearly states what it is. I do the same thing, just for a much, much smaller audience.
I don’t think there are many people who have criticized Cramer as long as I have, but he’s not responsible for predicting the house of cards that we built up. I don’t see why how Jon Stewart blames Cramer for this.
The news isn’t the agency that’s supposed to prevent crime. Sometimes they do, but that’s not their role. In the Madoff case, the SEC failed us, not CNBC. It’s the job of CNBC to ask the SEC what went wrong and hold their bosses accountable. I don’t blame local muggings on the local news either.
Finally, and most importantly, the credit crisis was by its nature extremely difficult to predict by anyone person, let alone a news organization. Let me state this carefully because this is a nice little lie that needs to end. Some people got parts of it right, like Roubini and housing. But no one could have gotten the whole thing right. If you think they could have, then you don’t understand what happened. For example, you would have had to have known that the government would come to the aid of Bear Stearns, but not to Lehman Brothers.
CNBC does have very good reporters (Faber, Griffith, Herera, and many others). I didn’t even see what was wrong with some of the clips Stewart played in his original piece. Faber merely had an executive go on record. That’s exactly what he should have done. Of all the people to make fun of at CNBC, Stewart went after David Faber?
Later on that same show, Stewart interviewed Joe Nocera, a very good report at the NYT. Ironically, Stewart could have used his exact same tactics against the Times to make it appear that they caused the mess we’re in. Andrew Ross Sorkin (a great reporter) said that the Feds wouldn’t let Lehman fail. Ben Stein says something absurd nearly every week. And Gretchen Morgenson…well, I’ll stop here.
If you want a cheap laugh, fine, watch Jon Stewart. But don’t think he’s offering a serious critique of financial journalism.

Posted by on March 13th, 2009 at 3:18 pm


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