I’m sure most of you have heard about the media fight between Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart by now. Jon attacked CNBC on his show and then Cramer fired back on his show and then Jon fought back at cramer and then Cramer was invited to go on Jon’s show. That is the basics of what happened. Here is the end part of the interview:
(See the first too parts at TheDailyShow.com)
This was definitely a well thought out attack and he hit him really hard. I think Cramer definitely deserves it, but I don’t know about CNBC as a whole. It’s quite obvious that Cramer did a lot of illegal and unethical things in his hedge fund to amass the wealth that he has. Hedge funds are notorious for illegal activity and market manipulation because they are unregulated by nature and they can pretty much do whatever they want. Add on top of that that the SEC can’t really detect it, or don’t have enough smart people working for them to figure it out (as Cramer clearly said in the clip they were showing).
As for CNBC though, I think they do a decent job reporting and providing view points on the market. I’m not sure what Jon was frustrated about with CNBC. The fact that they didn’t predict the market would tank? The fact that they cater to people that day trade and operate hedge funds? Or the fact that CNBC is possibly trying to sell everyday Americans on buy and hold, while the bankers and hedge funds are in the background stealing and making all the money? I don’t know…but I think those kinds of attacks should be directed at the government and the regulator agencies like the SEC for dropping the ball and letting things get out of hand. It isn’t CNBC’s job to oversee the entire financial systems, keep banks from overleveraging, reveal ponzi schemes, and oust CEOs for spreading lies. I’m not saying CNBC is perfect or doesn’t need to improve, but they don’t have the power or the ability to do a lot of what Jon was complaining about. I think the content that CNBC has in the morning and during market hours is solid stuff, but after 4pm they have a lot of crap that is easy to poke fun at.
At the end Jon said that his mother bought into buy and hold / long-term investing, and it didn’t work out (most likely because of the recent crash). I think this was the source of his anger and attack on Cramer and CNBC. Sure that is sad and sure he has a right to be mad at what happened in the markets, but people have to be in control and understand their investments and understand that things like what is going on right now in the economy and the markets has happened before and it will happen again.

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