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The media (mostly CNN and Fox News) are continuing to talk about how Cramer got beaten up on Jon Stewart’s show. I saw a few pieces on CNN where they were likening the attack to when Jon Stewart attacked Tucker Carlson, which really damaged his career. 

I said in my last post that Cramer kind of deserved this attack because he obviously did some illegal things in his hedge fund and that is part of what is wrong with the financial world. I also think that Cramer’s advice is really half completely wrong and half brilliant. He has had a lot of really really wrong calls (such as calling a bottom before the giant declines in the market). However, he has been right about a lot of things. Does anyone remember when he freaked out and said that certain people in the government have no idea what is going on?

“He has no idea how bad it is out there. HE HAS NO IDEA! HE HAS NO IDEA! I have talked to the heads of every one of these firms in the past 72 hours and he has no idea what it is like out there! NONE!… My people have been in this business for 25 years and they are losing their jobs and these firms are going to go out of business and HE’S NUTS! THEY’RE NUTS! THEY KNOW NOTHING!!!”

Here is the clip:

This was before Bear Sterns collapsed. (I believe they show a chart of Bear Sterns in this video and the stock is over $100). Honestly, this exactly what Jon Stewart was saying CNBC needed. Someone to connect the dots and let viewers know when things are getting out of hand. Now, to be fair, I don’t think that Cramer was predicting the horrible recession that we would slip into. However, Cramer said right in that video that a lot of people were going to lose their jobs and that the financial firms were going to go out of business. That call was right on the money. Yet Cramer later recommended the stock on his show and the clip of him doing this was used against him by Jon Stewart. In my opinion, that is just a cheap attack. The sad thing though is that Cramer didn’t fire back at all when he really could have. Even on his show the day after he didn’t really defend himself at all.

Listen, nobody is perfect and almost nobody can consistantly make calls that are right over 50% of the time. Cramer has to make a lot of these calls as part of his show. So he is going to be wrong a lot of the time. I think this is something that many people don’t understand and they think that since he is on T.V. and sounds like he knows what he is talking about his is going to be right most of the time. I defintely think people should do their own research and not make investment decesions based on what some crazy guy on T.V. is saying. 

So, overall, I think Cramer deserves some of what Jon Stewart dished out to him on his show. However, not most of it. I think Jon Stewart and many others don’t realize that it is impossible to always be right on stock picks or the direction of the market. Jim Cramer definitely has had a few extremely good calls and kind of called the meltdown in the markets before it all happened. So for Jon Stewart to attack him like that is extremely unfair and for Cramer not to fire back (at least on his own show) is baffling.

Ok, I think that is all I will be posting on this. I don’t really like to get wrapped up in all of these media attacks and whatnot. It is really just a lot of noise and doesn’t really matter much because you should always make your own investment decesions.