Knowing enough to get away with it
Jim Cramer bobblehead from the TV show Mad Money (photo by flickr)
Jim Cramer admits he and CNBC could do a better job of reporting investing news in a manner that is honest and balanced. But the beat goes on. People have lost most of their 401(k)s and are looking to cash advance loans in a jam. Check out parts ONE, TWO and THREE to follow the whole story.
Cramer (on Daily Show): “Don’t you want experienced guys like me to expose that?”
Stewart: “No, no… I want that desperately, but that’s not what we’re getting. You knew what the banks were doing – and now to pretend that this was some crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami you couldn’t see coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”
Cramer: “I’ve known the CEO of Lehman Brothers, Dick Fuld, for 20 years. He brings me in, (I ask him how Lehman is doing) and he lies to me, lies to me, lies to me… I have called for indictments… we’ve not seen any… where are they?”
Stewart: “It’s very easy to get on this after the fact… Whose side (is CNBC) on? Wall Street traders were on a ‘Sherman’s March’ through their companies, financed by our 401(k)s, and all the incentives of their companies was for short-term profit. They burned the fu*&ing house down with our money, then they walked away rich as he&^! And you guys knew that was going on.”
Cramer: “We have reporters that try really hard. The market had been going up for a while, we thought it could continue despite the shenanigans. I didn’t think Bear Stearns would evaporate overnight. I knew the people who ran it, I always thought they were honest. Did I get taken in? Maybe, to some degree.”
Stewart: “Selling the idea that you can sit back and get 10-20 percent return, selling this idea that you don’t have to do anything. Don’t you always know that that’s going to be a lie? How is saying ‘I’m going to teach you to be rich!’ different than an infomercial?”
It isn’t. We’ve been had. CLICK HERE for part five, where Cramer admits that – like Stewart – he’s a “snake oil salesman.”
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Of course Dick Fuld lied to him – the executive class doesn’t think that the rules apply to them. If that hasn’t been proven by their behavior over the last year – by examples of people like Fuld, John Thain, and numerous others – I don’t know what will. A harsh example needs to be made, and I don’t think letting Lehman go bankrupt while its corporate officers who engineered that bankruptcy abscond to other firms and large bank accounts is good enough. Bringing back the stocks wouldn’t be a bad idea.