If you don't follow Jon Stewart, he's a political commentator who operates under the guise of commedian. Since I love to laugh, love great sarcasm and love politics/current events, I am a faithful viewer (though I don't always agree with his points).
Stewart has recently set his sites on CNBC, specifically stock guy Jim Cramer, as doing a public disservice in light of the recent economic collapse. He basically accuses Cramer of knowing how shady the banks/investment organizations were, and helping to hide it:
JS: I gotta tell you. I understand that you want to make finance entertaining, but it’s not a f---ing game. When I watch that I get, I can’t tell you how angry it makes me because it says to me, “You all know.” You all know what’s going on. You can draw a straight line from those shenanigans to the stuff that was being pulled at Bear and at AIG and all this derivative market stuff that is this weird Wall Street side bet.
JC: But Jon, don’t you want guys like me that have been in it to show the shenanigans? What else can I do? I mean, last night’s show---
JS: No, no, no, no, no. I want desperately for that, but I feel like that’s not what we’re getting. What we’re getting is… Listen, you knew what the banks were doing and yet were touting it for months and months. The entire network was and so now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.
Here is the first portion of the video:
The rest can be seen here
I think it's interesting that the financial elite knew this was coming...as they understand "the system" enough to make it work (legally??) to their advantage. But the rest of us don't...and they're using our 401k's to fund the activities.
I don't (obviously) understand this well, but think this interview is mighty interesting.
Cheers!
2 comments:
One point I interpreted from that interview that I hadn't really thought about before was that the cable news people have made entertainment programming out of financial information, and I'd have to agree there are ethical issues involved. Medical and exercise tv programs include disclaimers about not being a replacement for a physician's advice, maybe these financial programs should do likewise.
Or as George Will put it on one of the Sunday news shows, don't take financial advice from people who shout at you.
Well, George Will is a very smart man!
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