Holy crap! Stewart has got Cramer crying on The Daily Show. I think this one show has either a. made Jon Stewart a legend, b. ruined Jim Cramer and his whole network, or c. both. I know for sure that FOX and CNN will pounce on their rival network for days on end. I can’t imagine CNBC retaining any sort of viewership after this episode.
And then Colbert has a philosopher as a guest. Big night for Comedy Central.
That link doesn’t work for me.
BTW, in Cramer’s defense - you gotta be a moron to pick stocks based on one man’s opinion. It’s just a TV show. He makes more sense than Peter Singer, the philosopher that Colbert had on. Should everyone tithe just because he says so?
edit - Oops. It does now. Prolly heavy traffic.
Stewart is not specifically picking on Cramer for the bad advice he gave. Cramer has just became the face of this debacle. Stewart is railing on the fact that these financial people all knew what was going on with the market, and were in fact deliberately creating trouble, and then going on the air and selling the lie, the cover story. Now that the shit has hit the fan, they come out and say that it was a 1 in a 20 million type thing; that they didn’t know. That no one could have predicted it, and it’s bullshit.
I wasn’t paying much attention to The Colbert Show, but I doubt that Singer offered his own authority as the reason why rich people should give at least 10%. I doubt he said, “Do it because I want you to.” He probably gave some reasons for it…it’ll help the poor, economic situation, help society, blah blah, and probably end it with how the tithing will eventually benefit the tithers.
I got Stuart’s point. But he’s a typical liberal. It’s not that I think that those in the know were blameless - but Stuart’s very point was that it’s only common sense that the market runup, like the real estate runup, couldn’t last much longer than it did. Everyone who was paying attention knew this, just like anyone who was paying attention knew that Saddam didn’t have WMD. Of course, he’s a comedian - intellectual honesty is not his stock in trade. The segment wasn’t very funny, though. It was done for the same reason that Cramer does what he does - ratings.
Everyone plays the greed game, and then the blame game. Those morons who put all their retirement into Enron stock didn’t listen to even the most basic investing advice. Why blame Cramer, or anyone as CNBC, for the advice they give? It’s just TV.
They’re a network. That should tell you something about whether they’re being payed attention to. They sell themselves as journalists, when in fact, as Stewart showed, they’re agents working for these behind the curtain deals who now want to play victim. The people who trusted them at their words are not morons. They were justified in believing them, and the majority of them weren’t wall street brokers. They were mom and pops who had saved a bit and wanted to get in on the stock game. Okay, sure. Fuck them. But don’t tell me they were being stupid or unreasonable.
Where exactly can someone get the most basic investing advice?
I don’t think that was his point at all. Dude seemed genuinely pissed that CNBC duped a bunch of people and caused in some part the economic problems.
He saved a bunch of people? You mean that what he said was news to them?
These moms and pops were buying individual stocks? And had no idea of the risk associated with that?
Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.
I didn’t say they were ignorant of the risks. That’s not an issue here. One of mom and pops resources was this financial news network.
Yeah - one. His show is clearly as much about entertainment as it is about information. Not unlike the Daily Show.
There are hundreds or thousands of sources for market advice.
Buying stocks is not foolproof.
This blame thing is just a bit puerile.
Warren Buffet lost billions. On paper.
Investing 101 - if you’re about to retire, put your money in bonds. Don’t pick individual stocks.
If you’ve got time, and are diversified, this crash shouldn’t do much harm. In fact, I am thinking about buying 100 shares of GM.
After reading this heated exchange I just had to take a peek at the shows.
Of course, on this, Faust, you’re 100% correct, but you are utilizing sensible argumentation. You don’t give the ignorant enough to work with, here.
xzc, had some good points regarding this whole episode. It seems the Cramer show and CNBC, as a whole, tout themselves as a business news organization. One would assume that a news organization reports news not try to make forecasts about the news (are weather forecasters news reporters? I think I’m shooting my own argument). It seems Stewart’s angry due to the fact these shows were encouraging viewers to trust in them. Perhaps if they had adopted a weather forecaster mentality, I doubt Stewart would have had such a visceral reaction. But we all know (some of us) they’re salesmen and it’s all part of the game.
xzc, this, theoretically, is a catch 22. I imagine these business news institutions make their money from the corporations they endorse, um, I mean, report on. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Okay, let’s say these news institutions don’t take any advertising dollars from these companies and decide to report in as fair a manner as they can. Let’s say they knew bubble was about to hit the fan. Judgment call time: You’re a news executive who has to decide whether to blow this whole thing wide open. You are not sure if these companies are going to recoup their losses and cover their over leveraged assets in time for next quarter’s filing. You know full well that if you open the lid on this can, investors are going to bail so fast that the resulting crashes would be catastrophic (let’s say you are personally invested in these companies, not your news organization, and are hoping for a turnaround). Make the call.
Anyway, back to Singer: It seems philosophers and scientists tend to not do too well on the Colbert Report, probably has to do with pausing to give a well thought out response. I loved the little backhanded suggestion Colbert made, at the end of the episode, regarding revenue on Singer’s book.
Give it a try.
I was sitting around one day and it occured to me that Sirius XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) might not go bankrupt. Due to this thinking, I said, “What the hell,” and bought myself 1,000 shares of it when it was trading at a little under eight cents per share. After the fee, the whole transaction cost me, like, $84 and a little change.
That was in early February, and today it’s up to .235/share, so if I were to sell, I would almost triple-up on it. Right now I think I am just going to hold my shares, but if it seems to continue gradually going up, I am going to buy more. Ultimately, should it ever come back to a dollar per share I’m going to sell and profit off of any shares that I acquire in the future, but profit almost thirteen-fold on my initial 1,000 shares.