cramer vs stewart

my comments are below the video.




for anyone who listened to cramer in the past, his candid 2006 comments should come as no surprise. the guy ran a hedge fund managing billions of dollars for institutions, pensions, and the very wealthy. he did not (and should not) serve the average investor.

stewart presents himself as a man of the people, yet it concerns me how he's directing his anger; at a television channel. a freaking television channel. perhaps more disturbing than stewarts misplaced anger is that people actually took cramer seriously. he's obviously intelligent and in the right arrangement his advice could be of value, but on his television program "Mad Money" he is an entertainer, nothing more. stewart knows as much as anyone what drives television programming; advertising. networks make money from advertisers, the more outrageous cramer acts (or anyone else for that matter), the more people who will watch. if more people watch, cnbc (or any other network) can charge more for advertising, plain and simple. there is nothing in the formula about being truthful or honest or on the side of the public; those are just fringe benefits if they happen to work out.

have we as a nation lost our ability to accept responsibility for our own destiny? i believe the american form of government crafted over 200 years ago was designed to give us just that, the opportunity to forge our own way, to work to improve our station, or not. somewhere along the journey we lost our direction, changed our course and asked a government to take care of us; an ironic twist of serve the servants. perhaps we've lost the skills necessary to navigate life without regulation and oversite, dependent on beauracracy to protect us from ourselves.

next time you hear of a financial scandle ask yourself, "how could the victims have protected themselves"? if the only answer you come up with is government regulation.....we might be too far gone.

-joe