Do We Have To Send You Back To The Daily Show Again?

Here's Jim Cramer building and knocking down a straw man on one of NBC's multi-platform products this morning:

I think it was a naive and misleading thing to attack the media. We weren’t behind this. CNBC, in particular, has been out front on this. … I think there are people who bear so much more responsibility [than the media] that it’s just wrong-headed: the politicians, the regulators, the SEC, the lenders, the investment banks. … It’s just a naive focus, it really is Meredith.

I like the part where Cramer says he was taking "the high road" on the interview, to Jon Stewart's face, while calling him naive when he won't be faced with a rebuttal. Quite a man.

What is misleading and fallacious is the notion that Stewart believes the media are solely responsible for the meltdown. He's a media critic, making the media his focus. But of course, everyone understands the failure of regulators and the greed of executives. That would be, um, not the point of the critique, which is that CNBC has abdicated their responsibility to the viewer to make any sense of the meltdown. And Cramer brushes aside his admission of guilt from when, um, HE was one of those traders on the other side engaging in illegal activity.

On the Monday show, The Daily Show ran a segment about short selling. That was meant to run right before Cramer's appearance (he alludes to it, but they cut it when the interview went over). The segment focused on the actual traders involved in this. It actually featured Deep Capture creator Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com. So to say that Stewart is monomaniacally focused on the media's culpability is just wrong, and Cramer knows it.

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson is concern trolling. Congrats, Tuckie, you got your name mentioned on the show!

Rigged Game

I sincerely hope that nobody is surprised by the fact that MSNBC, which has hyped the Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer "battle royale" for over a week now, has coincidentally dropped coverage of it at precisely the moment when Stewart delivered the knockout punch and made minced meat out of Cramer, CNBC and the entire media-industrial complex:

TVNewser reports that “MSNBC producers were asked not to incorporate the Jim Cramer/Jon Stewart interview into their shows today.” By TVNewser’s count, Cramer’s Daily Show interview was only mentioned once on MSNBC today and that was during the White House press conference when a reporter asked for Obama’s reaction.

CNBC is part of a corporate entity (although, interestingly, they don't report to the news division. That corporate entity is not going to get rich by highlighting the deficiencies of certain parts of its business. Like I said earlier, it's not just CNBC. It's the entire media complex. And this indictment of their business won't be prosecuted and turned into a conviction.

James Rainey is also interesting today about CNBC and the larger implications.

The Beatdown

In case you missed it, you can catch the entire three-part interview between Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart here. I'd embed it but it's everywhere already. I think James Fallows has the right take.

Through karmic guidance, I sprang awake at the exact moment Jon Stewart was beginning his merciless demolition of interview with Jim Cramer of CNBC's "Mad Money." [...]

Although, improbably, I share a journalistic background with Cramer*, I thought Stewart, without excessive showboating, did the journalistic sensibility proud.

Just before leaving China -- ie, two days ago -- I saw with my wife the pirate-video version of Frost/Nixon, showing how difficult it is in real time to ask the kind of questions Stewart did. I know, Frost was dealing with a former president. Still, it couldn't have been easy to do what Stewart just did. Seeing this interview justified the three-day trip in itself.

The post is entitled "It's true: Jon Stewart has become Edward R. Murrow".

I don't know what to say beyond what's already been said. Stewart is seemingly the only guy left in America willing to call out the media who has the platform to do it to their face. Jim Cramer is a criminal walking free and I don't use that term lightly. He has practically admitted to crimes, and Stewart played some of them last night. But it's not just CNBC. It's the entire media complex. What is said on television or in print is such a small part of the story, and what is concealed is so often more vital for a well-informed citizenry than what is revealed. How is what CNBC has done any different from the cheerleading into war in Iraq?

I'd like to think that this is a moment for change, but Jon Stewart is a comedian on a comedy show, and he's well aware of that, even though he's the only guy in the business with the platform. There will be a backlash against him, and it's already starting to happen. He can take it and give back plenty. But ultimately, the system remains. And this indictment won't be picked up as a conviction. Because the entire media is corroded.

Must-See TV

Don't miss Jim Cramer on The Daily Show tonight, the culmination of a week-long feud. Initially, I didn't think Jon Stewart will actually make Cramer REALLY uncomfortable, like by bringing up Deep Capture or his admission that he manipulated the markets as a hedge fund trader, but apparently that video is played, and the interview is good. For his part, Cramer tried to talk everything down this morning.

The CNBC star, apparently trying to soften his image, went on “The Martha Stewart Show” this morning and admitted that Stewart has gotten the better of him so far. “My kids only know I have a show ‘cause Jon Stewart’s been skewering me,” the "Mad Money" host said.

Cramer's never hesitated to show emotion before, but on Thursday, he showed a new, vulnerable side. "I’m a little nervous. How bad is it gonna be? Is he gonna kill me?” Cramer said. “You should be nervous,” (Martha) Stewart said. "He’s fast as lightning!”

“I’m not, I’m slow as molasses,” Cramer replied. Considering that the entire conceit of “Mad Money” is that Cramer is manic -- “mad,” if you will -- this new, self-deprecating incarnation of the man seems pretty implausible.

So I'm guessing Cramer will sit there and say he's sorry a lot, and Stewart will tear CNBC a new one, and they'll agree to disagree.

Is that an exciting preview or what?

Not A Fair Fight

I don't know what Jim Cramer thinks he's accomplishing by taking potshots at Jon Stewart. It's not that he's "punching down," which is just something you never do, it's that you're serving up hours of material for a well-trained group of comic writers just begging to make you look like a schmuck. And impugning Stewart's character, saying that he doesn't have the "guts" to pick stocks or make transcripts of his show (like The Daily Show airs in secret) misses the point entirely. This isn't a winnable fight.

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Then again, this could be an elaborate setup for Cramer's appearance on The Daily Show Thursday night. Hopefully he'll ask about Deep Capture.

Media-Financial Complex

CNBC decided to respond to the righteous Jon Stewart rant against them on a Friday so he couldn't talk about it on that night's show. Their claim is that Stewart is "bizarrely obsessed" with their network, and Stewart was repeatedly calling Rick Santelli to come on the show. That's, um, called BOOKING A GUEST. Maybe CNBC doesn't do much of that, they just have a "CEO room" in Manhattan and just put the camera on whoever shows up there. It's not like they ask much of a variance of questions: "How great is your company doing? Is it awesome to be rich?"

Meanwhile, the network and other right-wing market populists continue to push the idea that Obama is responsible for the Dow's fall since Inauguration Day. I guess the business climate and the job loss has nothing to do with it.

The argument that Obama is somehow responsible for the collapse of Wall Street is absurd. First, every major policy that led to this collapse occurred under George W.'s watch (or, more accurately, his failure to watch). The housing and financial bubbles were created under Bush and exploded under Bush. The stock market began to collapse under Bush.

Second, it's inevitable that stocks, led by the bloated financial sector, would lose their remaining hot air as the new administration begins "stress-testing" the big banks, many of which are technically insolvent. After all, their share prices were built on a tissue of lies and dreams. Other sectors whose values were similarly distorted and distended by years of financial deception and regulatory disregard, such as housing and insurance, will also have to return to the real world before they can recover. Which could mean more stock losses.

Finally, none of the financial wizards who are now charging Obama with leading America into the abyss have offered an alternative plan for getting us out of the mess that, not incidentally, many of these same wizards happily led us into. For years, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the financial gurus of cable news cheered as Wall Street leveraged its way into oblivion.

Obviously, Wall Street rage is aimed at getting the biggest banks paid off and the shareholders made whole so that only taxpayers will bear the burden of the collapse. There may be a very good reason, however, for outlets like CNBC, in particular Jim Cramer, to claim that Obama is responsible for the fall of the market. It deflects the blame from themselves. The story of Deep Capture is epic and needs to be read in full by the investigators who followed it for years to really understand. But TocqueDeville at Daily Kos does a pretty decent summarizing job.

This rabbit hole involves the thugs surrounding Jim Cramer and some of the top financial "journalists" from the New York Times, WSJ, Fortune magazine and BusinessWeek, top hedge funds, the Mafia, and the DTCC. It also includes "blackmail, smear campaigns, espionage, fraud, harassment, extortion, bribery, rumor-mongering, sabotage, off-shore money laundering, political cronyism, frivolous lawsuits, witness tampering, biased financial research, false identities, bogus credit ratings, bribery, libelous blogs, bad science, forgery, wiretapping, counterfeiting, collusion, lying, cheating, threats and theft."

And if that wasn't fun enough, it may be the underlying story of what collapsed the entire, global banking system or at least served as the catalyst for the collapse.

We're talking about financial journalists using the power of their megaphone to trash a stock, or even tout it at the last minute, and then, through naked short-selling, earn millions while destroying public companies. And Jim Cramer is perhaps the greatest offender.

I have analyzed well over a thousand stories written by this clique of journalists. The vast majority of them were sourced from a small group of short-sellers who are also friends of Cramer. Other popular sources for this group of journalists include convicted felons, mobsters, dubious private investigators, crooked lawyers, hired stock bashers, and gun-toting goons - most of whom are tied to the Cramer constellation of short-sellers.

Some of the stories written by these reporters are accurate enough. But many are not. The journalists misconstrue data with seemingly purposeful intent. They exaggerate and obfuscate. They publish innuendo or merely repeat, Deus Optimus Maximus, the words of their hedge fund and criminal friends. A single negative story by one of these reporter-thugs can send a company’s stock tumbling by more than 50% — pure profit for their hedge fund sources, who of course sell the company short (often right before the articles are published). Meanwhile, an overwhelming majority of the companies targeted by these journalists will also be the victims of phantom stock selling and other shenanigans. The journalists do not mention this in their stories, and in fact go out of their way to deny that phantom stock exists.

Anyone who says otherwise is subjected to a vicious media smear.

It doesn't take much these days to persuade you that anyone on Wall Street is a crook. But Mark Mitchell had the goods. Cramer understood the value of information, like any inside trader. Then he got the power, through his own TV show, to control that information. And the method that Cramer and his cronies apparently preferred, naked short-selling, has been brought up as a possible culprit in the fall of Bear Stearns. Sen. Jon Tester even brought it up in a hearing with then-SEC chair Christopher Cox in April 2008.

This financial meltdown isn't entirely due to the people who made money on the way down. But the corroded relationship between the Masters of the Universe and the subjects who cover them - the Media-Financial Complex - is absolutely a part of this tale. And the phantom stock - invented wealth that can appear and disappear - is just another of the exotic financial instruments created by people who push paper and add zeroes to their balance sheets and call it work, paper and securities that are then leveraged and bet upon and sliced and diced until nobody understands them and just doesn't want to get left holding them when the organ stops playing and the big dance ends.

Read the story of Deep Capture. It's a through-the-looking-glass experience. Anyway, I can think of a guest for Stewart's next show...

Our Best Defense

At times like these, you can do nothing but laugh. And when you're done with that, you can laugh at CNBC, which has taken a major hit during this financial crisis, exposed as they are to be a cheap fraud.

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CNBC has no response because they couldn't possibly have a response. There's nothing that can be said. They are a network dedicated to offering zillionaire CEOs a platform to lie, and spinning pro-business and anti-worker policies as good for America. That's what they do, that's all they do. And when a crisis hits, they look foolish.



I actually thought the best takedown of them all was Stephen Colbert inviting Jim Cramer on The Colbert Report and then playing pictures of cute kittens and puppies behind whatever he said. That's basically CNBC in a nutshell leading up to this crisis, when Bush was still in office. They've only done a 180 now and gone market populist because they think they're protecting their bottom lines. CNBC is a farce, and Colbert basically proved it last night.

Non-Scary Cramer

Jim Cramer, in line to be Robert Gibbs' latest punching bag, is dutifully fulfilling his role as Wall Street's chief media embed by calling Barack Obama a "Bolshevik" who is "taking cues from Lenin". Earlier he called Obama's agenda "the most, greatest wealth destructive I've seen by a president."

John Cole has the exact right response.



"Bear Stearns is fine!!!!"

Don't be silly, indeed, Jim. Does CNBC have any non-shills around? I know, stupid question, simple answer, etc.