The level of disconnect of Wall Street with its responsibilities to overall market is amazing!
I didn’t have any idea what to expect when Jim Cramer of CNBC”s “Mad Money” showed up on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. This had been billed to be the most biggest confrontation of this present crisis since the Chicago Trader Rick Santelli read President Obama the riot act about paying for losers with the bailout plans of his administration. There was even an clip from earlier in the day when Cramer showed up on Martha Stewart’s show and was beating some pizza dough on the pretense of it representing the comedians head. As this much anticipated exchange drew closer the rest of the political pundits and news correspondents were anxiously building it up the be the fight of the century. This turned out to be a snake oil salesman being schooled on the concept of ethical salesmanship by a comedian host of a fake news program.
I hadn’t watched Cramer’s “Mad Money” as I worked previously in various securities and money management companies in my lifetime and was turned off by what they do for a living. I know that short selling, hedge funds and marginal trading are but a few of the toxic derivatives being traded everyday across the globe 24/7. I left because I understood that these highly prized and cherished markets are no more than legal gambling indicators for the rich and famous. I came to understand presently that Cramer is a continuation of a theme that has been around since the Eighties of a raging run away stock and real estate markets with no end in sight to the highs that could be reached. But the main point of the comic Stewart was a simple one, this was a man who made a living in this industry of high finance, and as host of his show, pledges to give us insight into the markets we may not ordinarily have. His declared insight is why expect him to protect us from the Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns failures that not only could wipe out our nest eggs, but more importantly; and worse still, shut down our national economy.
It appeared to me that I could not think of an answer to the very solid points made by Stewart “CNBC should have been warning ordinary people about the threat of the secondary market where Wall Street gambles on the short term health of the market or various sectors, instead of encouraging day traders to jump in on the bandwagon with such market damaging trades. Stewart: ” We the hard working everyday people who paid into our pensions, 401k’s and retirement accounts in order not to be a burden to our families, keep our dignity and have some funds for major illnesses, we are capitalizing your adventures in trading”. For all the energy and excitement he generates telling folks go sell this stock or buy that one, or trade some country’s currency up or down, he had no response to Stewart expression of everyday mans anger and concern about only the rich and connected gaining at their expense.
The best he came up with was he was off a little here and there in the market. I thought Jon Stewart, a very good comedian, schooled a prominent but typical representative of the Wall Street market mentality that has brought this most beautiful country to its knees. Mostly by what securities the markets were allowed to sell to the public and to other banks as was done over the last eight years. The SEC was informed about Madoff by Harry Markopolos long before his arrest here recently, and they refused to investigate him further. We have AIG staggering, CitiGroup on life-support, many other big name banks reeling, lost Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, E. F. Hutton to name a few major players in our country’s financial history. I didn’t hear a warning from Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s, Schwab, the FDIC, SEC, SIPC, or any other agency put in place in this country to protect the regular people who depend on the system having checks and balances in place so times like this don’t happen. He didn’t get the fact that the point of them being there saying they can help us do alright with dealing with the market, that they can steer us into making decisions in a wise manner with long term thinking of the average investors paying into quality of their future. I don’t know how many people saw the politely issued, but well thought out intellectual ass whipping Stewart dropped on Cramer that night, but if I was him, I’d be looking for another day job real soon.
© 2009, agentleman. All rights reserved.
