This was so good. It encapsulates--succinctly and forcefully--why nobody should ever pay attention to the bobble head supply-siders. Larry Kudlow and Jim Cramer don't have the slightest f*cking clue what they're talking about and they have ruined a lot of people's lives with their corporatist douchebaggery.

It seemed a little petty to me.

So two wrongs make a right. Because Wall Street losers got bailed out, homeowners who overextended themselves should get bailed out too -- at the expense of those who handled their money prudently.

This is the kind of logic that allows Washington D.C. to put us deeper in debt every day. Earners get punished; the losers and the lazy get rewarded.

Then why is Obama giving them so much attention? Kind of petty, isn't it? ww

And yet, JFO, it's the only honest source of financial news on American television. Go figure.

Great. Now I'm waiting for Stewart & Co. to go after Barney "no financial crisis" Frank et. al. ...

They're consistent in their criticism, Michael. Stewart doesn't hesitate to point out incosistencies between Obama's campaign promises and the administration's new goals/policies.

As for Barney Frank, I don't think anybody cares outside the blogosphere. The financial mess is mostly Wall St.'s fault, and people see it that way. Seems fair.

Hyperbolist, the point is that Stewart's ridicule kind of falls flat when you consider that EVERYONE -- not just CNBC, but EVERYONE including Congressional Democrats who fought tooth and nail to prevent regulation or oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- was caught off-guard by the severity of the market plunge.

I noticed that Stewart also conveniently omitted Cramer's advice to sell, starting in fall '08. Cramer advised investors when the Dow fell below 10,000 to cash in if they needed their money any time during the next five years. Somehow that failed to make Stewart's "report" as well.

Like Limbaugh, Stewart is a master of ridicule. But again, his "points" are weakened when you simply consider that banks and insurance companies literally prop up our economy. No matter how cruel it sounds, the truth is that individual mortgage borrowers do not. If I need a line of credit for my business, do I get out the phone book and start hitting up my neighbors with mortgages for money, or do I go to a bank? It's that simple.

If a large bank fails, hundreds of thousands of depositors stand to lose money in bank accounts, CD's, etc.; their mortgages also become unsecured. And if a large insurer like AIG goes under, millions of insured suddenly find themselves with limited coverage or no coverage at all, and annuity holders can suddenly lose a significant portion of their life savings.

No one likes to reward stupidity, but it is simply much more urgent to fix mistakes that place billions of dollars and thousands of people at risk than to fix mistakes that mainly impact individuals. (Understanding of course that individual mortgage defaults do impact banks ... this is not a perfect analogy, I'll admit.)

Ridicule is easy. Looking at the facts isn't. That's where people like Stewart (and to an extent Rush Limbaugh on certain issues) actually do more harm than good.

His advice was a little late, and in the days leading up to the end of Bear Stearns, he was quite clear in his advice--buy their stock and hold it, because it was about to go up. Epic fail.

Stewart is explicitly an entertainer, who enjoys making fun of Democrats and Republicans. (It's just been easier to make fun of the latter for the past... I dunno... eight years or so.) He doesn't stoop to the level of vindictiveness that Limbaugh often has. (Michael J. Fox is a faker; 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton is a dog; etc.)

The montage video makes it pretty clear that Jim Cramer, like many financial "experts", was wrong for too long, and finally acknowledging that the market was going to tank at the end of '08 was too little, too late. I knew it was going to tank early last year because I pay attention to people like Nouriel Roubini. Supply-side bobbleheads including Hannity (not a financial expert, granted), Kudlow, and Cramer have been shown to be on the wrong side of economic history over the past couple of years.

Personally I don't care because I know better than to take financial advice from a loud-mouth in shirtsleeves on CNBC who conflates Keynesian deficit spending with the Bolshevik revolution, and who finds more parallels between Obama and Lenin than Obama and FDR.

Gee..if stewart put a little effort into his show he might be funny.

Yeah, f*ck John Stewart, he sucks. Nobody watches the Daily Show or Colbert Report, especially nobody in that especially lucrative 18-30 year old educated demographic. Nobody buys their books either, and nobody wants them to host the Oscars, or Press Club dinners.

Let's give Dennis Miller another show! How much did they have to pay people to sit in that guy's audience? It was more than zero dollars, I remember that. Pretty embarrassing when you can't give away enough free tickets to fill a studio audience.

Name one funny conservative other than Chris Rock, moseby.

Personally I don't care because I know better than to take financial advice from a loud-mouth in shirtsleeves on CNBC who conflates Keynesian deficit spending with the Bolshevik revolution, and who finds more parallels between Obama and Lenin than Obama and FDR.

For someone that doesn't care, you sure do go on and on and on (repeating the same thing multiple times in separate posts) about pretty much everything except addressing the salient points Michael makes.

Could it be you don't have an actual, adequate, reasonsed response to his post that doesn't completely disembowel whatever--I'm sure much-too-nuanced for the rest of us--point you're trying to make that you don't really care that much about?

stewart and colbert couldn't carry Dennis Miller's jock. You are liberal scum so I do not doubt that you will disagree with this statement of fact. And honestly, I do not care--you are a gnat!