Spring Break
Greed, stupidity and misplaced populist rage
Sanjai Tripathi
Issue date: 4/2/09 Section: Forum
It was interesting to watch the March 12 episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Jim Cramer, Stewart's guest for the evening and host of CNBC's "Mad Money," had his hat handed to him on national TV, allegedly for being part of a corrupt, shadowy financial system and for not doing enough to inform viewers of how that system was about to break the world economy.
Usually, Jon Stewart is one of those guys who "gets it." He has built "The Daily Show" into a huge hit by seeing through a lot of the B.S. that people front with in politics, and poking fun at them for thinking it isn't obvious.
In this case, however, Stewart doesn't get it.
With Cramer squirming across the desk, Stewart played a few clips of Cramer at a conference making comments he didn't think were going to end up on TV.
Cramer appeared to admit that while he was a hedge fund manager, he did things to artificially manipulate stock prices through such underhanded tactics as spreading false rumors or creating phantom market activity.
This is potentially a major violation of SEC regulations, but for Stewart, that act tied Cramer to the cabal of financiers that caused of the world financial crisis.
"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," Stewart said.
Then there is the recent case of the AIG "bonus babies."
AIG is the giant company that had its finance products division rack up huge losses in credit default options (CDOs) on mortgage securities. To prevent a global financial collapse, the U.S. government was forced to bail AIG out, with around $180 billion in direct aid plus guarantees of payment on about $1.6 trillion in CDOs, which will almost definitely incur some additional losses.
Usually, Jon Stewart is one of those guys who "gets it." He has built "The Daily Show" into a huge hit by seeing through a lot of the B.S. that people front with in politics, and poking fun at them for thinking it isn't obvious.
In this case, however, Stewart doesn't get it.
With Cramer squirming across the desk, Stewart played a few clips of Cramer at a conference making comments he didn't think were going to end up on TV.
Cramer appeared to admit that while he was a hedge fund manager, he did things to artificially manipulate stock prices through such underhanded tactics as spreading false rumors or creating phantom market activity.
This is potentially a major violation of SEC regulations, but for Stewart, that act tied Cramer to the cabal of financiers that caused of the world financial crisis.
"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," Stewart said.
Then there is the recent case of the AIG "bonus babies."
AIG is the giant company that had its finance products division rack up huge losses in credit default options (CDOs) on mortgage securities. To prevent a global financial collapse, the U.S. government was forced to bail AIG out, with around $180 billion in direct aid plus guarantees of payment on about $1.6 trillion in CDOs, which will almost definitely incur some additional losses.
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