Jon Stewart vs. Jim Cramer

[eazyb81]

Originally Posted by Third Eye

No, I don't think we should do away with all shows of that nature by any means and I'm not sure how you could have inferred that. BUT, as was so eloquently pointed out by Stewart, it's not a ****ing game. We don't need the bells and whistles and pretty shiny objects that amuse the masses.

Do I think Cramer knowingly gave false information or lied about his opinions? That is kind of a tough one to call. Do I think a hedge fund manager knew EXACTLY how entangled the situation had become due to practices like credit default swapping? Hell yes. Do I think that anyone with that much firsthand knowledge of finance and economics should have seen the conflict of interest created by allowing banks to immediately turn over their mortgages to holding companies to securitize, effectively washing their hands of default risk? Hell yes. So did he purposely lie about his picks? Maybe not. Should he have known that the bottom was going to drop out and big time? Absolutely.

Cramer himself admitted their demographic, or at least their goal demographic, was those that were new to financial markets. Thus my reference to the margin.

In hindsight, yeah, he should have known the bottom was going to fall out at some point, and I'm sure he thought it would at some point. But not even Buffett can know for sure what direction the market will turn, and like I said in an earlier post, EVERYONE got this one wrong.

So yeah, Cramer should certainly have known what was going to happen, but you can lump everyone in that group, including almost every investment bank, hedge fund, mutual fund, etc. People should definitely be held accountable at some level, but Cramer is not near the top of my personal list.

It just seems to me that we're kind of picking on Cramer here simply because he makes his calls every night on a public forum. I guess that is his own fault, and he should have expected to take heat when the market turns like this, but I don't it's truly warranted.