Many people are complaining about Mr Stewart and yet he did a better job in that week or one interview than a lot of reporters did period on the subject .

Yeah they are both entertainers per say but even the name of the show : The Daily Show does not represent itself as news . But as Stewart pointed out you have Cramer's Mad Money and shows like Fast Money . Key word MONEY in the title of a show on a BUSINESS channel .

I don't think it's politics per say . I think Stewart was trying to be PC when Rick Santelli went on his rant about mortgages and bailouts . It has become too much of a sacred cow to go after home buyers ; repeat home BUYERS and not home owners . All that goes back to being thrifty , reading documents , doing some math and research and basically NOT having a sense of entitlement on owning a home .

Honestly thinking though if the media hadn't picked up on this I don't think either would countered remarks made and would've been on a different person or topic by now .

One more sideshow to keep eyes from the central ring: the government in collusion with these wall street crooks selling America up the river. In a few years we will look back at 2008 as the "good old days", before hyperinflation kicked in and it cost 40,000 to buy a loaf of break.

Stewart, Cramer, Bush, Obama - same bunch of goons.

It's kind of like losing the Superbowl (economic crisis) when really your quarterback is to blame and instead the damn kicker (Cramer) is blamed. He's still gonna stick up for his team but this shit wasn't cramer's fault...and when he does make mistakes he has the balls to own up to them! Unlike these ass hat CEOs.

I dont know if i like TDS anymore because they blamed the kicker. I would love to see Jon Stewart do Cramer's job. Seriously...and when Stewart fucks up we can all blame him.

this is NOT an issue of CNBC vs everyone else...I just don't get this kind of behavior, I will not be watching TDS anymore...someone gimme a reason to?

However, you can bet that Viacom also steps lightly when it comes to deep and sustained criticism of the Corporations that feed their empire. That reality is not lost on Stewart, Colbert, or anyone else involved in that system.

If anything, interviews (and shows) like this give us a little taste of what journalism _could_be_ if businessmen and their politicians were forced to be confronted by the media for their actions. Here we are sinking into a Depression because of deregulation, leverage, and ponzi schemes - and the fourth estate is too busy selling us toothpaste and health insurance to give a rat's ass about stability of America and the world.

A journalist with high integrity but without equivalent commercial pressures is Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org). A little hyperbolic and wonkish at times, and without the yuks and great editing as the Daily Show - she routinely speaks Truth to Power on a daily basis. She had the guts to directly confront Bill Clinton in a way that Jon Stewart would never be allowed to do, and she "nailed" him straight on. Great interview if you can find it.

I suspect, as with Crossfire, he's hoping that if the dancing monkey shows the world what an idiot you are or how pathetic your show is, that an exec will cut or change it.

Some are right , it's not CNBC's job to monitor Wall Street although it is their job to report on them . CNBC seems to ommit alot of facts or not take them into consideration when bringing these CEO's on as expert commentators .

My favorite example is ex AIG CEO Hank Greenberg who seems to be on CNBC every other month . Among the facts CNBC seems to ommit with Mr Greenberg are the very same facts that should give them reason to dig further as reporters . Around 2005/2006 Greenberg got caught transfering millions of dollars in stock awards into his wife's name .Mr Greenberg/AIG got caught in a fraudulent deal with a French Insurance Co in which Mr Greenberg is being sued by Warren Buffet . And yet Mr Greenberg is treated like a god by the CNBC commentators . If nothing else AIG's numbers should have been checked long before last fall .

Fox Business channel is the same way actually looking at business from a political prospective and also not really reporting what is going on in these companies with these executives .

As Stewart pointed out by substituting Cramer for god in the ' In Cramer we trust ' commercial CNBC opens themselves up to a whole lot of criticism .

The print media is guilty as well . If you ever pick up a copy of Fortune , Forbes or Money magazine they are filled ' fluff ' articles and infoads .Very little hardcore investigative reporting . Alot print media also recommends stocks and funds to buy and yet they don't even put the share price with recommendations .

Yes ; the individual investor must do their own research but their should be more investigative news out to which they can use as research .

I betcha, yup, yup, the only people who watched the exchange between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, and think that CBNC (Jim Cramer) won are the same delusional republicans - people who voted for McLame/Palin the Pathological Liar. OR, they watched another show and are mistaking it for "The Daily Show" that aired on Thursday. Those are the only two (20 explanations out there for the CNBC numbers, as small as it is.

Turn off CNBC. Read your Bibles.

Proverbs 13:11 - "Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it."

cliff notes: people need to take responsibility for their actions , Cramer doesn't make you buy and sell stocks, he suggests what he thinks is going to happen. Stewart couldn't differentiate between Cramer and CNBC....

CNBC is filled with crooks and I'm not going to defend them, but Jon Stewart shouldn't be on the warpath with fellow broadcasters about calling out guests. When Matthew McConnaughey comes on that show to promote another terrible fucking movie by telling everyone it's wonderful and funny, has Jon ever once said 'You know what dude? Bullshit. This movie is going to be atrocious just like everything else you do.' Of course not, because then you don't get any more guests. Many good points made by Jon, but that was not one of them.

@stevejust: I heard about a guy like that , he might even be the same one . I heard some hedgefunds basically shorted the first batches of those securities hitting it big . That's supposedly how many hedgefunds like Bear Stearns's failed because they started using that strategy late in the game .

Hedgefunds are supposedly the professional gamblers of Wall Street making really aggressive bets - with alot of research . Research - isn't that what a news person is supposed to do ?

Stewart is touted as a satirist, and he has no problem with that, he has an issue with being publicly compared to what are "supposed" to be mainstream journalists. Cramer, on the other hand, is a journalist, an analyst and a former hedge fund manager who touts himself as a master of the market. He is being called to task by the satirist for failing to use his journalistic integrity and professional acumen to warn his listeners.

Call him trite or smug if you will, but I'm not seeing any of the mainstream journalists making the effort that TDS does to dig into a story and make it relevant to the public. And I certainly haven't seen any of those ghost journalists you assume are doing "the exact same".

All this was about was why CNBC was not honest. A trite, smug commentator is better suited to point that out than a mainstream journalist who probably does the exact same.

@JanDuKretijn: A lot of people saw it coming. Some people, like the entire CNBC network, decided to cheerlead the market in an attempt to keep it running on the illusion that everything was fine.

Other people, like the hedge fund Hamilton Capital Partners put as much money as they could into betting that the housing market would implode and returned 600% on their investments. Take that, Madoff. A 600% return without running a Ponzi scheme.

The point that Jon Stewart is making is that if you're a financial news network, you really ought to be discussing and analyzing data like this, instead of running around with dump hats on and pounding things with hammers. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the implications of a chart like this:

Out of towners... Youtube to the rescue!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Only when they talk about facts is it news.

You just have to see who their advertisers are to know who they are aligned with.

Did anyone see the Outtake extended videos on the Daily Show web site?

There was a moment when he let slip about his mother's pension. If you read between the lines, he wasn't joking the other day when he mentioned his parents' 401(k)s being ruined by the Bear Stearns crash... That's where his anger in this is coming from. There are a lot of people in that position, and Cramer ought to answer for his poor guidance on it. Any other stock, any other day, going down 5% instead of up, but this one was a big misdirection. If it were me, I'd be on y knees apologising to the guy.

One of the questions raised by others anyway is that who is the target audience for CNBC ; private individual traders or professional traders and/or amatuer day traders .

Who is CNBC catering to ? . This is one reason they have been accused of cheerleading . Would it hypocritical to pass political comments and yet not mention consequences or question strategies .

I also like the shot Stewart got in about CNBC's show FAST MONEY when talking about stock picking or investing . I think Cramer was trying to emphasize entertainment and information and yet on FAST MONEY they give recommendations . I must say though it seems like some of FAST MONEY people slip in some quick facts that don't seem to get reported on .

Stewart made it very clear that his intended target was CNBC, and not Cramer in particular. He and Cramer made it very apparent that their disagreements were in no way personal, not like Tucker Carlson made it when Stewart was on Crossfire.

The stocks that Cramer recommend actually increase in value up to the point that the show is aired. Then shortly thereafter they tank. Either someone is gaming his show, or Cramer is gaming America. The SEC really needs to step it up.

Check out Ritholtz's blog.
[www.ritholtz.com]

1. How will CNBC respond? Steward dragged the entire network through the mud.

2. What will change on Cramer's show? He made a pledge to change towards the end of the discussion and I think he should be held to it.

3. What impact will this have on the future of financial reporting? Jon Stewart is INCREDIBLY influential with the younger, media-savvy generations who no longer use TV as their primary news source. I wonder if this is the beginning of the end for 17 hours of financial reporting on TV. Younger people are learning they cannot trust what is on TV and that the internet at least offers a multitude of opinions and unparalleled ability to cross-reference things. Surely nobody who saw this politely executed blood-bath will ever watch a financial TV show in the same light again now that their core premise has been revealed for what it really is.

I applaud Stewart for being the media spokesperson that America needs in this time of media corruption, even if he doesn't want that role and does not officially accept the responsibility that has been foisted on him by young liberals.

What you just witnessed is what happened with Crossfire. This was not Jon Stewart the comedian. This was Jon Steward the pissed-off citizen--and that is not someone you want to cross, especially when they are on their home turf with an entire team of writers and video editors.

I really have to check out the extended interview when I get home. It was intresting to see how much of the time Cramer didnt look Stewart in the eye. Still, I have to give Cramer props for maning up and taking his beating in public like that.

And if sometimes a politician DOES give straight dope, theres a panic and the markets tank.

Puny Humans.

"Ask not what I am getting out of this, Ask what others are getting. And if they are getting anything at all, boy it is wrong."

For them, everything is a Zero Sum game, either I get everything or i get nothing. Since the other guy is getting /something/, I must NOT be getting anything!!

The same kind of people who read Ayn Rand and actually like the message(as supposed to claiming that they read without actually doing it ;).)

I think you guys missed the point, what has happened is so much bigger than mr. mortgage broker or i-wanna-be-a-homeowner doing the wrong thing. Sure, that led to the spiral that we're in. But the *true* source of the problem is the hedge funds, the day traders, the people placing BETS, literally unsecured bets on nonexistent income streams and residuals supposedly coming from derivative packages of loans secured by mortgage loans secured by our houses.

What JS was pointing out was that Cramer *admitted* that they were using a non-enforced interpretation of a non-enforced regulation to push the markets to the hedge funds' benefit. Creating a falsely profiting market, so to speak. Lying to those of us with our 401ks and retirement "where they told us to put it" so that they could literally steal from the market, as JS said, if not morally, then criminally.

In this case, the blame goes #1 to the day traders who found a way to knowingly steal from the entire market. #2 to the government who wasn't overseeing what they were told they didn't have the right to oversee (commercial paper historically was "self regulated"). Somewhere way down the list, maybe at #5 or 6 or 7, there you'll find first the mortgage lenders who made the bad loans based on false promises and the borrowers who had no common sense in thinking they could afford to spend money they didn't have.

Hopefully this makes sense, I come from a banking background more than a financial markets one, so my terminology might be slightly off. One mistake people often make is thinking that when people talk about "Banks" that they're talking about community banks or the mortgage lender down the street, which may, in the industry, be referred to as a Commercial Bank (which in some ways, can be a misnomer). A lot of what they're talking about here are the "banks" that trade commercial paper and bet on futures and hedges, which are regulated activities for a lot of banks.

Thank heavens for John Stewart! But I give Cramer credit for showing up too. Unlike Stewart, I don't think Cramer really had a clue about what was going on. The foxes have been in charge of the chicken house since Ken Lay got away with Enron. Not being very good with numbers myself, I am easily dazzled by elaborate logorithms and equations, the kind to which economists are so partial. However, ever since I took a couple of college economics courses and realized my professors may have been good at equations, but they were clueless about everything else, I realized forever that so-called financial experts know nothing whatsoever about the economy until after it has already happened. It's not rocket science...just smoke and mirrors.

And people wonder why better educated people watch Stewart and not O'Rielly.

[www.deepcapture.com]

Warren Buffet came out and said pretty much the same thing yesterday, that the greed based short term profits mentality going on caused the collapse.

This week has had more honesty in it than the last year has had.

"How does it feel to be a billionaire?"

As for the whole of the television industry, there is some integrity out there. But it is uncommon and certainly not represented by these two clowns.

I agree with you that CNBC is way low on the list and that there is plenty of blame to go around for everyone, I like the order of blame you have but would modify it a tad.

The government and banks should be tied for number one since the government essentially works for the banks but they did allow it to happen.

Number two would be the quasi-professionals in the real estate market, I love your points about them, couldn't agree more.
Finally there is enough blame leftover for the actual home buyers to come in third. They were responsible for what they did but they did have the government, banks and the quasi-professional real estate people giving them "advice" at every point in the process, it doesn't excuse them but as a layperson you are looking for "experts" for guidance when making big decisions like buying a house, when all the experts tell you the same thing most people would have a tendency to follow that advice, some did not but most did.

I think this is the tipping point in which Jon Stewart and The Daily Show transcend "fake news" and really take some people to task for decisions, and really attempt to help laypeople understand what is going on around them. There have always been political guests on the show as well as celebrities, and I think this CNBC fiasco was the final straw that made TDS more than just "fake news" - it made it more relevant in the way that I think it was taking some advantage of its reputation for having a younger audience not saturated with CNN and Fox News reports and using that wisely by demanding answers and explaining the current climate for people.

I found the episode to be very good, very refreshing to watch. I don't always agree with Stewart's political views, but I always respect the fact that TDS knows its audience, and knows that it's got a very unique position to help change the way things are being done by calling out the people who had a hand in it, and to demand an explanation. He might be a comedian, but he is also extremely good at boiling down the points, and he also has the benefit of being able to say what he wants in a public forum.

Wow. Just wow. I guess no one ever has anything substantial to say on t.v., ever, since pretty much everything on t.v. requires advertising dollars.

I get Stewarts point but CNBC is WAY low on the list of people / entities to blame for this. The government is at the top of the list, they allowed a secondary market to exist in such a state as to provided banks with a huge financial incentive to make these junk loans. Second place (atleast on my list) is a tie between the bankers who made the loans knowing that the loans were trash and the people who freely entered into contracts that involved payments that they either couldn't afford or that may adjust to a payment that they couldn't afford. Third on the list is all of the quasi-professional in the realestate industry like real estate agents, especially buyers agents / or Mortgage brokers who are supposed to represent the interests of their clients - ever hear of one of those guys saying "Mr. ConstructionWorker, you made $6,000 in May... that is not the same as having a steady income of $6,000 / mo. Do you really think it is in the best interests of your and your family to buy a $350k house with $1k down using a variable rate mortgage - this could be a disaster for your family. Lets look at some properties that you will be able to afford even if work gets slow for a while so you can keep a roof over the kids heads..." I'm pretty sure the interaction was more like "Mr. ConstructionWorker, home prices go up 5% per year, count on it! This is a great investment for you! Once this ARM adjusts up just refinance - you will have no problems! But there is just one thing... There is a house just down the street that has a bigger garage and an additional bathroom - from a resale perspective I think it is a better investment, and it only costs $12k more!"

i understand jon's points & agree with them, but he should be talking to joe kernan or carl quintanilla or maria bartiromo.

i think cnbc letting jim cramer act as their spokesperson in this matter was a smart move. they can isolate any effects these interviews might have had on their more mainstream shows.

so, jon's talking points = win. cnbc's strategic "shenanigans" = win. overall? i guess it's a tie?

It was truly an eyeopener for me and would be for most of the American public. People need to know how the stock market really works and I think the full interview should be aired by mainstream media like on CBS or CNN. Lou Dobbs is always saying he is for the American people and he should play the full 30 minute interview on his show if he really cares about the average American like he says he does.

And Jim Cramer is no idiot either. He's an incredibly smart and talented man, but he got corrupted by Wall Street just like anyone else. The difference with him is that he constantly tries to redeem himself by attempting to help out the little guy (obviously he's not always successful) and occasionally revealing some of Wall Street's dirty secrets. Cramer's definitely guilty, but I have to applaud him for having the decency & balls to face the public and answer for the sins of CNBC. Everyone else at CNBC is going to remain silent and hope that we all forget the accusations and denouncements lobbed at them by Jon Stewart.

The bottom line is that this is an incredibly important discussion, and if it continues, it will have a profound impact on the future of the financial industry and how we view it. I really hope it doesn't stop here.

But, to concede a point to Cramer and other media finance reporters/commentators, I'm not sure there were many people who saw this implosion being set up. With hindsight, we can all stand agog at the 30:1 leveraging and ARMs. But reporter after reporter have said they just didn't see it coming, and I'm sure they're not all just taking the Adolph Eichmann-style defense. Best case might be Suze Orman who said the stock market would dip again, but even she was flogging ARMs in her book my mom gave me when I graduated college.

The problem is our focus on corporate short-term profits. That's what's screwed us on this, and we can't entirely fault people like Cramer for being products of their own culture.

Santelli didn't upset me, because I understood the rant as frustration and personal opinion, and I totally understand the reasoning behind his rant.

I also think Santelli kind of went against CNBC when he made his rant, because you could see how CNBC got uncomfortable with his rant. And I don't necessarily think CNBC endorsed Santelli just because they didn't stop him when he was live.

I don't want to be paying for someone else who made poor decisions in life, it's not my responsibility and I resent having that choice made for me. But at the same time, not everyone who is underwater made poor decisions. For some of those people, things just fell apart from the depressed markets and job losses.

We're all in so deep, regardless of whether we were the responsible ones, that everyone has to pitch in to keep the boat afloat. It's not about who made the wrong decisions anymore because obviously these people are so underwater, they can't even begin to work toward getting back to the surface. And so it falls on the responsible ones to consider the benefit of the whole country. It doesn't mean we have to like it, but reality is not always nice.

I rarely enjoy the interviews Stewart does because a lot of the people who come on his show are so awkward on TV and don't know what to do with Stewart's comments...but Cramer seemed at home there, and I loved the discussion between them. It was actually much more entertaining than Cramer's show.

To his credit, Cramer doles out plenty of advice but no one should ever, ever, ever rely on CNBC for their financial decisions. Who would trust one TV network for that?

I agree with Stewart that CNBC can be a great tool, but it cannot replace the regulators. That's just putting a bandaid on a bayonet wound. The regulators need to deal with this, and make themselves effective. But I agree with Stewart that CNBC needs to choose whether their side is for the consumers they report to, or the side of the CEOs they apparently pander to. Cramer says he believed they were honest - okay, fine. Even if he did, that's over. CNBC as a whole needs to stop taking what CEOs are saying at face value, and do real investigations and real reporting to make consumers aware of what their banks and financial institutions are really doing behind their backs and on the backs of the country's people.

Daily Show had the upper hand since it was home court advantage, though.

I would hug the guy because he wasn't willing to back down or take shit from CNBC. All cable new networks suck up to these guys. No one asks hard questions today unless it works in their FAVOR. Fox new is horrible about this as NBC is. It just happens to be they are now on the side of the fence NBC was on for so long.

Makes me laugh and sad at the same time.

If you want to invest in the stock market, quick listening to TV to get your knowledge. It will rot your brain and ruin you.

I think Stewart won if you can call it that . He did an excellent job of taking Cramer to task . But I wish Stewart had more clips of CNBC treating some of these CEOs and so called experts like gods .

@dangermike: Thats the truth about pretty much any journalist, they expect to get paid and generaly every form of media I know of sells ad space...

@N.RobertMoses: That is very inacurate for Jon Stewart saying that he has no relation to any sort of journalism, the man went to school for journalism, in fact it was just years ago when people were asking when he was going to give up on fake news and move into working on real news teams.

The man worked hard to get where is, and learned a lot along the way but to say he has no relation verges on insanity.

I think that's why Stewart has gone after them because all of the pundits are acting like this is fun and interesting but for a lot of people this is a freakin' disaster.

I also love TDS but only catch it a couple tiems a month. Stewart earned my respect with the crossfire incident.

I have a twinge of sadness when I realized i got my 'news' from a comedy show. I think that speaks volumes to the current state of our media. I have the feeling that Stewart is really the only person that gives a damn.

As somebody who has created his own show and works in the entertainment industry I can tell you right now that, while advertisements help fund the show and give us the profit margin to continue the show, it is not "all about the ads." We created our show to entertain people in our target market, not simply turn a dime...

For you to call out Jon Stewart on this matter is both ignorant and ridiculous as you: 1. Don't know Jon Stewart or probably anybody who works on his show and 2. obviously don't know what it's like to create your own creative element.

(Doing this reply manually because it doesn't seem to be working)

I think you're right - the biggest problem is the shows are giving American viewers what they want; fast money answers. The network isn't going to claim responsibility, they'll just say "do you believe everything you see on TV?" yet they're the ones who are putting it on the air as if it's fact, truth and the right thing to do.

Biggest problem with Americans is they fell for it.

Don

It reminded me of when Stewart went on Crossfire. It showed his true range as a public figure, and his genuine concern for the average American who gets ignored as the majority of politicians and "news" outlets pander to their respective fringe groups. Kudos to Jon for asking the hard questions. Hopefully Cramer and his network are actually examining their consciences the way he appeared to be last night.

Jon's big points were that the financial world was guilty of a sin of commission rather than just not doing better. Cramer didn't fail his viewers, by actively drawing in viewers with promises of expertise and quality information CNBC and "Mad Money" actually sought out people to misinform and mislead.

I haven't watched CNBC for about a year and I won't be watching again. I certainly hope this doesn't turn into a boon for the network and more people shut them out.

I have no desire to have babies, but I'd so have Jon Stewart's babies.

Santelli's "Tea Party in July" rant got everybody's attention, especially when it happened in the heart of one of the major trading floors at the Chicago Merc. I still believe that the party may happen anyway if out of honor for him.

The tape of Jim Cramer shrugging his shoulders while admitting his stock manipulation as a hedge fund manager made me furious. There should be an investigation of that.

But yeah - what LoganAdams said (above). These were two very well-informed gentlemen having well-reasoned differences of opinion. Let's replace reality television of today with THIS kind of reality television.

cramer was reespectful and so was stewart. This was nothing like the crossfire incident. cramer is still puzzling though. He has a really nefarious poast regarding his hedge fund days. anyways teh true target of the daily show was CNBC anyone who thinks cramer was jon's beef is just wrong.

It was actually kinda refreshing....someone actually showed up on the show when most people would just ditch (Santelli anyone?) And it didnt turn into a walk-off-the-set kinda fight. Stewart always seems prepared and ready to take over or concede points. Half the time its the guests that become the problem.

Also interesting was how Jon didnt make it always about Cramer, he said "CNBC" an awful lot (granted the clips were all Cramer).

Or maybe I'm just desensitized to it all so much that it seemed civil by comparison.