The Stewart/Cramer Showdown
The big Steward-Cramer faceoff was funny and it made good television. But what’s striking about it is that basically Jim Cramer had nothing to say on his own behalf and then at the end of the day that’s not going to make any difference. People talk about how sad it is that you need to turn to Comedy Central to get real journalism. And it really is sad because Comedy Central just can’t do what journalism is supposed to do, and it can’t do the things that make a difference.
It’s worth thinking a bit about the General Electric Corporations news media properties more generally. They hired Phil Donahue, and then fired him when he had the highest ratings on the network because they didn’t like that he was against invading Iraq. They hired Keith Olbermann, expecting him to not be a liberal. But he turned out to be pretty progressive. And that turned out to be pretty popular. So they started featuring him more. Which prompted a huge freakout from their big news stars like Tom Brokaw about how it was injuring their credibility to appear on a network that’s cobranded with a network that features a liberal. Meanwhile, at their other cobranded network, CNBC, they have on air a bunch of frauds. People show up and pretend to have sage investment advice. Larry Kudlow is put forward as someone who’s knowledgeable about economic policy. And when someone points the fraud out, the whole GE team circles the wagons to defend Jim Cramer and CNBC. Liberals? That wrecks their credibility. Liars and frauds? That’s great. Go peacock! It’s a deep rot, and John Stewart satirizing it doesn’t really change anything. It would require the people working at NBC News to develop a conscience.
Meanwhile, Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory did a good column for CAP on how increasingly “business news” doesn’t report news about business so much as it does advocacy for investor class interests.
65 Responses to “The Stewart/Cramer Showdown”
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March 13th, 2009 at 10:54 am
I agree with all of that, but can we at least make the distinction between all of that crap and stuff like the FT, a lot of the WSJ reporting, and people like David Leonhardt at the Times?
March 13th, 2009 at 10:59 am
And it really is sad because Comedy Central just can’t do what journalism is supposed to do, and it can’t do the things that make a difference.
I disagree… somewhat. Stewart single handily destroyed Crossfire on CNN, I wonder what effect this whole dust up will have on CNBC? There will be ramifications, of that I’m certain. I bet this will be the isngle most-watched “business news” clip of the year. The strange nexus of the Bush Administration and the maturation of the Internet have brought the Court Jesters back into the public eye in a way I don’t think anybody anticipated. Somewhere Kurt Vonnegut is laughing. While the larger point that a comedian can’t be effective as a news outlet may be valid, The John Stewart/ Colbert phenomenon isn’t easily dismissed either.
March 13th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Not having watched the entire interview online (only what aired last night) – I found it quite illuminating that Jim Cramer never said who his audience was – if it’s the normal people or if it is the CEOs, etc. If CNBC would just be forthcoming and say it’s not for us lowly people who invest long term, then we could just wholeheartedly ignore the station and make it go away. There can’t be that many in the Wall Street Class that are watching TV all day and night.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:03 am
My investment advice: start shorting The Sheinhardt Wig Company
March 13th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Those talking heads are all dim bulbs pretending to know what they’re talking about. A few years ago, I went to watch a taping of Jeopardy! celebrity tournament in Washington DC. One of the contestants for my taping was Maria Bartiromo, the famous CNBC talking head. God, what a dim bulb she was. I think she was up against Keith Olbermann, and he blew her out of the water. Bartiromo was clearly out of her league and couldn’t even get the easy gimme questions. If she’s symptomatic of that bunch at CNBC, I think I know why we have a problem taking advice from them.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Trust fund scumbags aren’t supposed to talk disparagingly about GE, right? Where’s Petey to set us straight on this?
March 13th, 2009 at 11:11 am
My partner and I are both academics in the field of communication, and just yesterday he was arguing that these sorts of situations show why we need to spend more time looking at cultural and institutional explanations of the media and less on the content of the messages being circulated. The extent to which representations on political talkshows have unhinged themselves from both public opinion and who is in the White House and Congress is indicative of the problem.
The issue is that a liberal attitude or style of reason is almost always fundamentally incompatible with developing consumers, which is the sole purpose of commercial broadcasting. It doesn’t matter what demographic you are trying to reach, who is in power at the moment, what the public believes at the time. I’m usually not a brute historical materialist, but it’s the most persuasive answer I’ve heard in a while.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:11 am
That’s been true, like, forever. Look up some old newspapers from the 1920s and you’ll see plenty of advocacy for the interest of investors back then.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Funny how this whole dust up began with Rick Santelli’s rant with the traders….. Santelli got out of the way and let Cramer take the heat (deservedly so). The CNBC boys love to bash politicians, but hate to ruffle the feathers of the CEOs–with some exceptions. I’m curious how Morning Joe covered the Stewart-Cramer interview; didn’t see it this morning.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Bump to RoboticGhost. Exactly what I was about to write.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Matt, stuff like this is why I love your work, and why I continue to subscribe to your blog even though I’m constantly fighting information overload and have to cut down on my political consumption. Thanks for the great work.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Just to point out, Keith Olbermann isn’t really that progressive. Rachel Maddow is progressive. KO is just a non-insane guy who cares a bit about civil liberties and whose chief opponent is a conservative demogogue. If everybody else in the media during the Bush years hadn’t been quite so nuts or KO’s main competition was a left-leaning show, he’d probably be doing a much different program.
Mike
March 13th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I thought Jon Stewart’s interview with Joe Nocera of the NY Times early this week was excellent (after Nocera had a great column explaining AIG)
The interview: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=220254&title=joe-nocera
First part of the interview is about AIG. Second part is about CNBC and the job it does. Nocera is very calm, but he doesn’t pull punches. “Money Honey” Maria Bartiromo must not be too happy.
Better than the focus on Cramer, was the Daily Show’s clips showing that all of the NBC spin-offs were stepping into line, giving Cramer time to counter Stewart and trying to belittle Comedy Central. Looks like they upped the ante and lost.
In all, a great period for the Daily Show.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:21 am
I think that this in some ways misses John Stewart main point: that the whole concept of stock picking is a scam, and it is a point that you never hear on any other network (although it is an old point, e.g., http://www.slate.com/id/2159669/)
March 13th, 2009 at 11:29 am
It’s always struck me as a scam. When these companies were sucking air, Cramer, et al, were telling the suckers to buy.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Soviet Pravda is a good counterexample to CNBC. Pravda was a PR mouthpiece for the Bolsheviks, and owned and operated by the Party; it was always understood that the contents of Pravda were what the Party wanted you to hear.
CNBC, on the other hand, claims to be an independent news source. However, when its primary functions are 1) market engineering through stock promotion and 2) serving as a pulpit for CEOs to lie to the pulpit, it’s nothing more than a PR mouthpiece for corporations.
The trouble with either isn’t their existence, but rather their preclusion of actual reportage. Pravda does no harm as long as it doesn’t crowd out Gazeta; CNBC does no harm as long as it doesn’t crowd out genuine business news, WHICH IT DOES.
CNBC is fine as long as WSJ is doing its job… which it never has, because it plays the same role.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:36 am
the whole concept of stock picking is a scam
Eh, it’s not really a scam. It’s just very difficult, requires a fair understanding of business and accounting fundamentals, a lot of oversight, and would never make for decent half-hour-a-day television. Your link is certainly right though that the vast majority of people would be far better off just selecting a cheap and good index fund than trying to keep a successful portfolio or even select a manager who’ll outperform after expenses and taxes.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:36 am
contra Luke, WSJ newspages are pretty good (in contrast to editorial page yammerings)
What struck me about Stewart-Cramer was the contrast between the directness and relevance of Stewart’s questioning and CNN’s John King’s recent attempt to corner Peter Orczag on the proper scope for a baseball metaphor (relief pitcher comes into the ninth inning, how do you characterize his situation?) King was not only playing gotcha, he was doing it over an inapt metaphor.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:36 am
CNN told me this morning that since this back-and-forth started Stewart’s ratings are up by 20 some percent and Cramer’s are down 20 some percent.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:41 am
I think that you guys have very warped expectations of what CNBC or Jim Cramer should be. Ultimately, their business boils down to the psychology of human beings–a notoriously difficult business. It’s funny, but I don’t see Matt writing posts exploring how inaccurate left-wing think tanks are on their pronouncements of the EU, or on the ability of the surge (not that I was in favor of it) to significantly reduce the violence in Iraq.
Secondly, this revelation that CNBC serves the interests of the investor class is amusing. Of course it serves their interests…That’s their audience. Does ThinkProgress serve the interests of all Americans? Of course not.
Thirdly, I don’t know how many of you really understand the difference between the investor/Wall St. class and everyone else. The investor class wants to make a buck…They’re not so much concerned with larger macroeconomic analysis/decision-making provided that it doesn’t impact their ability to make a buck. I suppose you could call that greed, but it’s no more greedy that a progressive website that advocates the redistribution of wealth to folks that pay nothing in taxes.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Pro-bidness bias is the media is nothing new.
Don’t remember if it was in Manufacturing Consent in the speaking engagement I saw, but Chomsky made the point long ago (and he probably wasn’t the first): Newspapers have a business section, TV news has business segments — but they never have Labor sections or divisions.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:43 am
For future reference, the man’s name is Jon Stewart, not John.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Ed, you either didn’t watch the clip, or you missed the point: CNBC is lying to investors for the sake of corporations.
The Investor Class wants to know where to put their money; the Investee Class wants the investment money. The trouble isn’t that CNBC serves the Investor Class, it’s that it serves the Investee Class. It’s a scam.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:49 am
advocacy for investor class interests.
If this was true, as a member (along with half the country) of the investor class, I say they’re doing a crappy job then.
You could say, still uncharitably but with greater empirical basis, that they engage in advocacy for management class interests. Which are not quite the same thing.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:51 am
or what Luke just said. (stupid force)
March 13th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Yeah, CNBC probably does more ill than good, but does it really deserve the blame for not predicting and heading off the coming crisis?
Stewart himself acknowledged several times that it was unfair that Cramer became the whipping boy for the whole network, but should the network itself be the whipping boy for all the evils that Citi and AIG and Greenspan and on and on cooked up?
It’s the frog and the scorpion – and if you’d argue that the world would be a nicer place without scorpions, you have to acknowledge that it will take more than a late-night harangue to make that happen.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Luke,
Who is CNBC? Is CNBC Roubini? Is CNBC Jim Kramer? Indeed, who is the editorial page of the NY Times? Is it now Ross Douhat, or was it always Paul Krugman?
This idea that CNBC is monolithic is really confusing to those of us that tune in (from time to time). Why do I, or any other investor catch CNBC? Because they have good guests (from the business world) and different opinions from different people. It’s up to the guy watching the programs to put that together.
Do you get that on MSNBC or CNN or Fox? To a degree, but much less so in my opinion.
As for it serving the investee class, I completely disagree. This is not a conspiracy…That’s just a crazy notion.
Honestly, do you watch CNBC?
March 13th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
CNBC serves the interest of business by enabling the delusions of day traders, who are flattered indeed by the label “investor class”. Day traders are CNBC’s audience. For them, the stock market is functionally identical to a very large roulette wheel. I’ve never been to a casino; does the house have a TV channel devoted to tricking guests into thinking they can win at roulette? Because that’s CNBC.
Where it gets “meta” is when the “investor class” comes to know that they’re participating in a scam, but keeps playing anyway. Prior to the crash of 1929, when insider trading was legal, everyone went along while the big investors ran up the price of a stock, because you can always make money in the market by finding someone stupider than yourself. When I saw those clips of Cramer talking about manipulating stocks, that’s what I was reminded of.
The final bit of creepiness is old Jack Welch haunting the studios of “Morning Joe”. Really makes me wonder about the whole GE/NBC nexus.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Moreover, what the Stewart interview (and some of these comments) tell me is that there is a dramatic lack of understanding of what is happening. Many of you keep pushing this line that these institutions were lying to their investors…What were they lying about? Were they lying about the value of assets (today) that they viewed as long term investments? How would you handle those valuations? Are these valuations any more valid today than they would be tomorrow?
There’s a great deal of simplistic thinking on this…Again, I’d recommend that you take a look at ashtonadvisory.blogspot.com to understand this.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Sure Ed Smithe. That CNBC serves the investor class is no great revelation to me either. But one of the telling elements of last night’s great Stewart/Cramer showdown was how Stewart repeatedly put this question to Cramer (”who is CNBC’s audience?”) and Cramer refused to answer it – choosing instead to just sit there mute waiting for the time to pass. Why? Because though CNBC’s audience is the investor class I would argue they try to create the perception that their audience is everybody – i.e. the interests of the investor class are in everybody’s interest and I think its safe to say that in light of recent events this is demonstrably not the case. Yes – the investors want to “make a buck” but at some time in the last few years they crossed some kind of line where their “making a buck” put the whole system in peril. It was and is the height of irresponsibility which we are still sorting through. “Greenspan’s Error” if you will – that left to their own politically cultivated unregulated devices these people would still take into account not only their own survival but the survival of the very system that gives them life as an important measures of their Randian Self-Regard.
Well, apparently not.
This was at the heart of what Stewart was trying bring forth and illuminate, I think. And in this vein – the old footage of Cramer talking on TheStreet.com about how a hedge fund manager manipulates the market was absolute gold.
Its all well and good to say that they “are just looking to make a buck and everybody knows this” – but why does Wall Street fell they somehow get a pass on the questions of conscience and responsibility that “everyone” is supposed to be struggling with?
March 13th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
@EdSmithe:
Anybody, and I mean anybody, who stepped back and looked at the big picture of what was going on with the housing market, could have told you it was going to collapse eventually. That’s the sense in which people were lying — they had to know that everything was going to collapse eventually because there was no way to not know that.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Wu Tang,
I’ll tell you why, because they feel as though those questions are being asked by people with their own agendas…that probably should be asked the same questions. Per my comment above, and I really hate bringing this up because I think that the guy is a fraud, but why is it that when a guy that Joe the plumber asks a question like, ‘why are you going to take my money,’ you’ve got a group of people that immediately jump all over him and attack him? Doesn’t he have the right to ask a simple question like that without being seen as somehow greedy?
My point is not Joe the plumber (I think I made my feelings felt)…My point is why is CNBC so evil and everyone else isn’t? We’ve all got interests, and what differentiates the good ones from the bad ones ought to be an empirical cost/benefit analysis. This holier than thou attitude of, what I want is more honorable than what you want, does no one favors. You’ve got to explain to me, empirically, why someone investing in a company is more greedy than someone who doesn’t pay taxes and views a government handout as a positive thing. Most importantly, I have to explain to you why I think that the former, while greedy, is better for the nation than the latter (all things being equal).
March 13th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Mr. Yglesias mentions DOW 36000 cokehead Larry Kudlow. Here is a man who has been in drug rehabilitation at least twice for cocaine addiction and was fired by the National Review when his coke habit became known. My position is, why the fuck is CNBC given this cokehead a microphone? In listing to him, one has to wonder if all the coke he snorted fried his brain, which probably wasn’t too robust to begin with.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Nate,
I agree with you to a degree. In fact I remember having conversations with friends of mine at a right-wing think tank in 2003 after I purchased my house on this subject (I thought someday it would collapse…possibly around the time that interest rates on those ARMs went up).
But the reality is that it’s a lot more complicated than that. Mark-to market is one reason why…Prior to 2007, those banks could service those assets and not be penalized for them. That changed…And I don’t think that many people saw the ramifications of the cascading effects that could develop. Certainly the people (many of whom are on the left) didn’t see the potential downside of mark to market…Now, per the discussions yesterday, they appear to have woken up.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Do you disagree that CNBC holds itself out as being experts in this arena? Do they not bill themselves as having the ‘knowledge you need’? And are they not calling themselves a ‘financial NEWS network’? And if they are a NEWS network, does that not imply that they are journalists? And if they are journalist, does that not require them not to ask CEOs questions such as, ‘How great is it to be a billionaire?’, but to ask the real, tough questions, and then DO THEIR OWN RESEARCH TO DETERMINE THE TRUTH OF THE ANSWERS? And then to TELL THE TRUTH?
March 13th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Ed Smithe,
There is a Fairy tale that CNBC is presenting financial news in an interesting format, and that each of its contributors is just an independent, interesting analyst, competing in the marketplace of ideas.
Jon Stewart exposed the Fairy tale when he replayed the monolithic NBC “family” response to his attack on CNBC. Do you really believe there wasn’t a unity of goals behind the counter-attack? Do you still feel that CNBC and its sibs are intellectual capitalists, letting their ideas stand on their own merits? Or are they more traditional capitalists, trying to exploit the appearance of ideas to make money?
March 13th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
When there are cutesy commercials inviting everyone and his dog to get rich on Wall Street—Is that the same car he was driving yesterday?—I consider it a sign that a crash is well on the way.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
cube,
Honestly, if you think a 10 second clip is representative of a 17 hour program, then I’m not going to be able to debate you.
I watch the channel…not all the time, but enough to know that it requires (like anything else in life) the ability to analyze the raw material and come up with your own judgements. I really can’t say the same about most of the programming on any of the news networks (cable and basic).
As for defending themselves…ever seen when Fox goes after MSNBC or vice-versa. Or for that matter when ThinkProgress wants to organize a campaign against George Will?
They all do it…What you’ve done, to your advantage, is to recognize it and filter it. Personally, I think that most people are smart enough to do that.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I think CNBC did just as good a job forecasting the housing crisis as Matt yglesias did in forecasting the Iraq quagmire when he advocated for war in 02 and 03!
Good job Matt.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Ed
I’m enjoying this discussion but I have to say I find your reasoning defensive.
I’m not feeling ‘holier than thou’ nor am I somehow disillusioned with CNBC. But if they cannot answer the simple question about who their audience is because they “feel” (which means what? it means that they perceive and all our perceptions are warped) that their questioner somehow has an “agenda” (agenda that is somehow not theirs) I would argue that is because they have something to hide.
Say I was an investment banker or a hedge fund manager a few years ago and I realized that the evidence was pretty clear that should all this sub-prime/CDO/credit default swap stuff go on and carry forth to its logical conclusion then the whole system was in great danger of total failure at which case it would be left to the government to deal with – but I also saw that this impending crisis also held out some great opportunities where I could ’short-sell’ any number of CDO’s or purchase credit default swaps on any number of investment vehicles that were obviously going to fail – what would my responsibility be at that moment? It would be to my investors right? That’s my job after all. As a defense lawyer’s primary responsibility is to defend their client no matter if they are guilty or innocent. But this would still just perpetuate a system that was bound – I would say “doomed” – to fail at some point, which I would argue is what is happening now. And no, I don’t excuse the co-called “average investor” who gave his money to me (hedge fund/investor banker guy) in the first place. But one guy knows what’s going on and the other guy doesn’t – yes, in large part because he doesn’t want to know how the sausage is made.
I think what Stewart was getting at is the question ‘why doesn’t (or didn’t) somebody tell us how the sausage is made’? (Cramer talked last night about ‘30% returns for ten years, or whatever). I would never expect that answer from CNBC, but other people might. But I do think there is some disingenuousness on the part of the establishment business press in this regard. They can’t have it both ways. Their own PR that where they present themselves as somehow ‘truth-tellers’ is laughable. This is the bubble that Stewart has burst.
To Joe The Plumber I would say that I want “to take your money” because I feel that it is in your best interest. I am “taking your money” in the public interest and as you are a member of the public I am “taking it” in your interest – and a social safety net, including welfare would be a part of that. I’m sure you would disagree – Joe – but I bet I could prove you wrong and I could get the majority of the people to agree with me, which is the essence of this democracy that you have said that you love so much. That’s taxes. That’s fiscal policy. We’re not “taking your money” Joe, we’re asking you to do your part. Like these Wall Street types, why do you feel your only responsibility in this situation is to yourself and that somehow this is what is best and that if everybody were to do this then that would be the ideal state of affairs. That is the height of self-delusion.
Purist Libertarians to me are like people who believe in Pure Communism. They’d rather be “pure” then deal in reality.
I think what A.I.G Financial did was criminal. But I understand the arguments of people who say that to let them fail – and thus fully accept the moral hazzard they engaged in – would be to invite total “systemic failure”. Thus they have completely “gamed” the system and now have everybody over the proverbial barrel. It would be nice if somebody – the press, somebody who works in this industry, the SEC – pointed this out a few years ago. But as far as I know nobody did.
I really need to get back to work now.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
@ #14. I agree that Stewart main point was that stock picking is a scam. But I think he may be alluding to a deeper scam. Because the video clip of Cramer that Stewart constantly references is a first person narrative, from experience, about how crooked hedge fund managers can easily, and illegally, manipulate the financial system. Post Stewart/Cramer, the question some financial journos might be asking is what is the role of some of their brothers and sister reporters in the kind of scams Cramer lays out? Are they simply innocent “bozos” (that’s what Cramer calls them in the clip) who simply act as stenographers for Wall Street manipulators, or are they active, willing participants?
March 13th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
But if they cannot answer the simple question about who their audience is because they “feel” (which means what? it means that they perceive and all our perceptions are warped) that their questioner somehow has an “agenda” (agenda that is somehow not theirs) I would argue that is because they have something to hide.
Just so. CNBC certainly has characterized its audience for its advertisers – that’s what’s they are buying, the eyeballs and ears of the audience they want to reach. We are suppposed to believe that the editorial side (the hosts) are separated by an impenetrable wall from the commercial side (advertising sales) and know nothing of all this, which is simply not credible.
March 13th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Ed, did you WATCH the full Daily Show interview? Cramer’s defense is that he can’t
help it if people lie to him on his show–I mean, that’s the only possible defense for why CNBC should continue to exist after having been completely wrong about everything.
Now, as for the station programming in general, I don’t have cable. I watch probably 5 minutes a day of CNBC via linked-to clips; it’s probably Kudlow too frequently.
Everything that I see on it seems to be an advertisement for the stock market, the same way that MTV is an advertisement for records (and clothes, and drinks, and cars). It’s not a conspiracy, IT’S A GIANT COMMERCIAL. Is that statement so controversial?
March 13th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
It was a beautifully done attack, except on the short sellers. Cramer’s clip shows how rumors can work, but usually, those rumors are to boost stock prices, not collapse them. The Barry Ritholz (sp?) at the Big Picture had a couple of posts about this referencing a study of the 1929 collapse that fingered longs – as well it should. The shorts actually put the heat to the scammers, aka, the entire investment banking system. These entities were getting by on bullshit by the beginning of 2008, and CNBC made itself a tool for the bs-ers – and definitely not the shorts. Listening to the shorts in January 2008, one would have realized that all of the derivate-heavy, ultra-leveraged financial services firms were in trouble. When BS collapsed, if CNBC, along with almost the entirely of the business media, hadn’t produced a wall of sound of bullshit, shouting down the ‘pessimists” of the ‘goldilocks economy’ – if economists hadn’t been comically predicting a turn up in autumn of 2008 – such an absurd prediction that I loved ripping it to shreds over and over on my blog a year ago – then the government would have been forced to confront what was happening. By the way, the ever wrong GOP stenographer, Howie Kurz at WAPO, has an unbelievably dim column about the Cramer-Stewart battle in which he says, about Stewart’s claim that CNBC knew something was wrong: “Actually, Cramer didn’t know. Neither did most financial journalists. They should have been more aggressive in challenging the highly leveraged banks, the credit default swaps, the Washington regulatory cops who slept on the beat. But they were as stunned as anyone when Bear and Lehman went under and AIG and Citi had to be rescued.” – notice the collapsing of BS with Lehman, when they actually happened six months apart. It is this kind of lying that makes the Washington Post a special thing, a high school yearbook for the elite – but not a source of news.
The recent mini-controversy over whether the Lehman call was wrong or not misses the point – what was wrong was government inaction for six months in 2008 – it was paralysis on a Katrina scale. Whenever the Bush administration met a panic that derived from their own policies, they could only stare at it – and would be still if they hadn’t been swept away.
In that period, we simply didn’t have a working business media. It went into defensive mode, and consequently injured millions of Americans. I don’t think those people are going to forget. And if, by some accident, a normal person reads the comments that apparently stem from the rightwing trader set, outraged at the terribly liberal Jon Stewart, they will grow outraged themselves – it is this mindset which is not only heartless and selfish, but stupid, that operates the day to day of the financial markets. These are the salesmen. These are the people who, supposedly, give you financial advice. They stink. Their morals stink. Their predictions stink. Their models stink. Their life choices stink. Their lack of any civic sense whatsoever stinks. And their cheerleading press corps stinks.
March 13th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Go, Roger.
March 13th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
That’s a good “go”–I’m cheering you on.
March 13th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
They hired Keith Olbermann, expecting him to not be a liberal. But he turned out to be pretty progressive. And that turned out to be pretty popular. So they started featuring him more. Which prompted a huge freakout from their big news stars like Tom Brokaw about how it was injuring their credibility to appear on a network that’s cobranded with a network that features a liberal.
=============================================================
Yeah, it freaked them out so much they went out and hired that ultra-conservative Rachel Maddow. And kept that conservative “tingle up my leg” Chris Matthews. I mean Matthews is a blow-hard freak that does lots of stupid things, but trying to portray GE/NBC/MSNBC management as afraid to put progressives on the air is total BS.
Progressive is MSNBC’s brand now, trying to be the anti-Fox. They are still mired far back in third place in the ratings
March 13th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Shorter Ed Smithe: “I’m a retail investor who watches CNBC because it makes me feel like a rich fund manager.”
Shorter SLC: “Kudlow converted from Judaism to Catholicism and is apostate scum.”
Structurally, CNBC is ESPN with ticker symbols. But it’s also the guiding current for minnows piddling around with portfolios in the middle of a shark tank. (Anuff and Wolf’s Dumb Money offered a decentish first-person account of how home-based daytraders operated at the height of the dot-com boom.)
March 13th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
As if by magic coincidence, this is also the week when Brian Williams has decided actual news is too depressing, so he is doing major time-wasting happy news segments so everyone can feel better. Soon they will have a string quartet on playing “Nearer my God to Thee”.
March 13th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
It makes a difference to US, Matt. Jon Stewart’s evisceration of Jim Cramer and the stock manipulation dog and pony show called CNBC won’t bring the propaganda campaigns of The Greatest Purveyor of Weapons of Mass Destruction The World Has Ever Known (aka. General Electic) to an end.
But it does manage to keep us all sane. And that’s no small thing.
March 13th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Anyone else see McArdle’s post on this subject? Well, Yes, it is really fucking stupid. And yes, it’s par for the course. And NO, it is not possible to be more glib than her.
March 13th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
As I have noted elsewhere (“More Obama Supporters Concerned by the President’s Recent Actions”), Cramer is only one of several Obama supporters who have criticized Obama on his handling of the economy recently. Warren Buffett and Stewart Taylor (of the National Journal), for example, have made essentially the same criticism that Cramer has: in an economic emergency, the president’s primary focus ought to be dealing with that emergency, not trying to enact other policy priorities.
Cramer is getting the heat because he’s the easiest target.
March 13th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Matt’s onto something in his recent attacks on the corporate shilling of ABC and NBC — and we could add many other news organizations and financial “journalists.” The right wing has made much of the “liberal media” over the years; it’s good to see the beginnings of a counterattack on media that are waging top-down class warfare, at a time when a growing public is ready for it.
Don’t discount the effect a Jon Stewart can have. How long did “Crossfire” survive his drubbing on its own air?
March 13th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
“Trust fund scumbags aren’t supposed to talk disparagingly about GE, right? Where’s Petey to set us straight on this?”
The only reason I ever bother hassling Matthew is because I love Matthew.
—–
All that said, the real bonus of Santelli/Cramer-gate is that it just might getting folks to start thinking a bit about General Electic’s massively outsized voice in the American discourse.
GE absolutely dominates the coverage of Washington and Wall Street, and they use that dominance not for profits, but to maximize the 90+% of their business that has nothing to do with media and entertainment. (In contrast, Time-Warner, Disney, Viacom, and NewsCorp are all almost exclusively media and entertainment companies.)
Olbermann and Maddow exist precisely in order to shield GE’s left flank. Getting lefty pundits to even raise the topic of GE’s role is thus quite difficult, since GE really does have a blacklist, and kudos to Matthew for even daring to dip his toes in the water.
March 13th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Anyone else see McArdle’s post on this subject? Well, Yes, it is really fucking stupid. And yes, it’s par for the course. And NO, it is not possible to be more glib than her.
I did, unfortunately. Saw it from Sully’s site (I don’t want to hear about Sully’s blog. I know it’s not good for me, but I enjoy reading his blog, just like I also enjoy In-N-Out Double-Double burgers. Actually, I enjoy In-N-Out burger much, much more than Sully’s blog, but you get the point).
I like the Atlantic bloggers for the most part, even though I disagree with them much of the time. Each one seems to have a specific niche or area of “expertise”, if you can call it that. Sully is Sully, vainglorious and all that but also, at times, invaluable for pointing out the bullshit. He was ahead of the curve about the scariness of Sarah Plain before, he’s pretty much been a voice of reason in the Freeman affair. I like Douthat’s film reviews, Coates is interesting for his post civil rights movement perspective (though an extremely thin-skinned comment moderator), Fallows for China, Goldberg for his “Zionism”, and Ambinder for explaining why the CW of the Village of the CW of the Village.
But McArdle? An economics blogger who knows nothing about economics? She’s an MBA with a libertarian outlook, but she’s not an economist, and she’s not a journalist, so I have no idea what she contributes except for such mind-numbly out-there posts that generate lots of comments because of there “Huh? Wha?” factor.
I dunno, it’s kind of like a hiring an HMO claims adjuster with a Masters in Health Administration as a medical blogger. You would think an MD would be preferable, therefor you’d think The Atlantic would hire a real economist to be a “econoblogger”?
March 13th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
GE absolutely dominates the coverage of Washington and Wall Street, and they use that dominance not for profits, but to maximize the 90+% of their business that has nothing to do with media and entertainment.
I think you mean “GE absolutely dominates the coverage of Washington and Wall Street, and they use that dominance not for profits for their media properties, but to maximize the profits for the 90+% of their business that has nothing to do with media and entertainment.”
Right?
March 14th, 2009 at 1:28 am
“Structurally, CNBC is ESPN with ticker symbols.”
The point has been made before elsewhere, but if this were really true it would be an improvement. ESPN takes a much more cynical or skeptical attitude towards the pro athletes and other sports bigwigs it covers than CNBC does towards their counterparts in the financial sector.
I’ve always thought the serious news programs could learn a thing or two from how ESPN does things. Its no fluke that Olbermann did a stint at ESPN.
March 14th, 2009 at 8:20 am
Re pseudonymous
Shorter SLC: “Kudlow converted from Judaism to Catholicism and is apostate scum.”
Being that I was unaware that a) Kudlow was Jewish and b) he is a convert to Catholicism, it would appear that Mr. pseudonymous is seriously in error, not surprising as he is seriously in error every time he posts something on this blog. However, I’m certainly glad to know that Mr. pseudonymous doesn’t consider cocaine addiction to be something to be concerned about. Presumably then, he would not be at all perturbed if he discovered that his family physician liked to partake in the nose candy on a regular basis.
March 14th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Mr. Yglesias, i know you’re a policy wonk (my favorite policy wonk at that), but can you really be that dismissive of – or clueless about? – the impact of popular culture on politics, or in this case the effect of popular culture on TELEVISION NETWORKS?!?
When everyone in the country is laughing at and belittling a corporate product, the corporation hears it. does that mean NBC will overnight turn into a responsible news network? of course not. but the nation seeing the “deep rot” so stingingly exposed will cause some changes.
But the most important change this will bring about is not in NBC but in the general public: anyone who had any illusions that CNBC was a real news network certainly knows better now. pulling the wool over people’s eyes was their business, they were good at it. Stewart removed the wool, not as many people will be duped by CNBC in the future. that is undeniable positive change, instituted by a satirist. somewhere, Will Rogers and Mark Twain are laughing their asses off.
March 15th, 2009 at 8:01 am
“I think you mean “GE absolutely dominates the coverage of Washington and Wall Street, and they use that dominance not for profits for their media properties, but to maximize the profits for the 90+% of their business that has nothing to do with media and entertainment.” Right?”
Right, Shine.
Better phrased than my comment.
March 15th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
It is ironic that Jon Stewart and a comedy show instead of the regulators or news media had to bring all of this public. Also in Cramers defense he is far less guilty than most of the other financial media for their efforts together with Wall Street, the politicians & incompetent regulators for what has happened.
While I enjoy watching Cramer every night, one must remember the show is primarily entertainment. The financial networks exist to promote their advertisers financial and investment products. Who would expect them to warn about the credit bubble or coming Washington national debt collapse which will destroy much of the remaining private wealth in America today or what this will do to the dollar, the stock market, bonds, gold or the real estate market?
China is now worried about their dangerous over investment in US Treasury obligations. Washington ’s long-term choice is either repudiation or monetization. For monetization to be effective, the depreciation in the dollar would have to be substantial and this in turn would dramatically raise prices of imports for American consumers which would mean a tremendous drop in foreign imports. Debt monetization would cause more disruption to exporting nations than selective repudiation of Treasury debt.
The Campaign to Cancel the Washington National Debt By 12/22/2013 Constitutional Amendment is starting now in the U.S. See: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=67594690498&ref=ts
Thanks,
Ron with 30 plus years in the investment business and banking industry.
March 18th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
This is where google brought me, I guess they are reliable
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