Take Action: FIX CNBC or it will be business as usual!
By John Amato Monday Mar 16, 2009 3:59pm
Jon Stewart helped expose the horrific job that CNBC news has been doing during the entire economic crisis. Questions have been asked if they are profiting from it.
I joined a coalition of progressives demanding that CNBC hold themselves accountable and fix this problem.
CNBC should publicly declare that its new overriding mission will be responsible journalism that holds Wall Street accountable. As a down payment, we ask you to hire some new economic voices – people who have a track record of being right about the economic crisis and holding Wall Street executives’ feet to the fire.
Cramer took a beating from Jon Stewart because he had no defense against his actions or the actions of the entire CNBC network.
As soon as Jim Cramer went back to work on Mad Money, he openly mocked The Daily Show by playing a video clip of his appearance on The Daily Show and substituted a clip of Martha Stewart. That shows you how seriously he took Stewart's whole argument. It's just "Business as Usual" with these people. The media barely mentioned one of the most talked about TV spots of the year. Why? Big money, that's why. And Cramer's actions only prove that point.
Please sign the petition and make your voices heard.
Cory Doctorow:
Aaron sez, "Did you see Jon Stewart's smackdown of Jim Cramer last week? Today, some friends and I are launching an 'Open Letter to CNBC' with dozens of respected economists, journalists, and progressive political leaders demanding that CNBC start holding Wall Street accountable, starting by hiring someone who was actually right about the economic crisis. We're trying to get everyone we can to sign on. When 5,000 people sign the open letter, we'll deliver it to CNBC's headquarters. Will you sign?
And CNBC isn't the only network that should be ashamed.
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Who gives a damn about CNBC? Their financial analysis is poor, to put it mildly. I would recommend people to get ACTUAL FINANCIAL INFORMATION from the Bloomberg, the Economist, and Financial Times. In the two years running up to the Meltdown, Bloomberg, the Economist and the FT called it or were saying the current climate was unsustainable for much longer.
CNBC is a joke... maybe its just coming out to the public. I would liken them to a horse with blinders towing the company line. Its Barney meets Dow.
--are not reading C&L and will continue to put their eggs into the CNBC on-air personality's baskets. The election result proved the power of grassroots efforts.
THAT Stewart. The one who went to prison for SECURITIES FRAUD!! Yeah, that one.
Martha went to jail for insider trading, or selling a stock before word leaked out that it was going to tank.
Compare that with the clip of Cramer laughing about manipulating Apple by starting rumors and then saying "It was very satisfying." He should be investigated!
He got his as handed to him and was nothing more than a sniveling little coward. He's gonna need a sidekick to stay relevant. Ed McMahon is still unemployed.
As Jon Stewart would say F*** YOU!!! Cramer is a hack.
Going on The Daily Show *was* a cake walk for Cramer.
He walked right into the cake. He's still wearing it.
I'll sign, but I doubt it'll do any good. These people don't give a shit, and an online petition is even less likely to be effective. They probably won't even read it.
Don't get me wrong, I do support what you're trying to do, and it's a good thing. But online petitions usually don't do any good at all.
...for an alternative, better, more cogent idea from you.
Hmm, well, how about not doing something that has been proven to do jack shit? It doesn't matter how many people sign an online petition, because there's no way to regulate them. Maybe if it were a petition that people actually signed in person, but my point was that this won't amount to anything. Maybe what we should all do is spam out CNBC with protest letters and e-mails. Getting 5,000 angry letters has a lot more impact on a person than a single petition with 5,000 names of supposed angry people.
Cramer is a clown and only in Shakespeare are clowns supposed to tell the truth. The guys who need to be grilled are the directors of the big Wall Street houses who advocated for credit default swaps and applied them to mortgage-backed securities, often using risk models that didn't account for the inevitability that the real estate market would tank, as it always does every 15 years or so. Those guys and their math geeks should be in front of Congress every day for a month, until the madness of their assumptions and the smirking disregard of risk they knew would express itself eventually is known to all. They did know and they did abandon their fiduciary responsibilities and, for that, they should be subject to whatever justice can be applied by the regulators or Justice Department. Those guys, they need to be on TV and their names known to all. Cramer is a ridiculous distraction.
But:
Only in Shakespeare? Unh-uh. Jon Stewart is the clown in this case, speaking truth to power. He was directly preceded by clowns like Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, the Marx Brothers, Will Rodgers, Charlie Chaplin, Mark Twain.....
Cramer wishes he was the clown. But his shtick is neither funny nor truthful.
Clowns are out there, mostly, just to freak little kids out... Bozo wasn't much of a jester after all ;-)
In medieval times, it was the fool, or court jester, who spoke truth to power, through the use of satire, irony, and innuendo. Seen by many as idiots, they were, in fact, unusually intelligent men for their times.
Clowns, on the other hand, are silent entertainers. They do not, traditionally, speak during their act, which consists primarily of pratfalls, tomfoolery and slapstick humour.
In the not-for-TV clip, Cramer mumbles that he dabbled a little in sinking the stock price of a company he shorted.
What a lot of BS.
He specialized in it and was instrumental at destroying several medium sized companies.
The man is without ethics, morals or a conscience.
Check out the damage naked short selling does here:
http://www.deepcapture.com/
What would be the result if CNBC held themselves accountable, since it was their lack of accounting skills that got them in this mess?
Their advertisers or their audience?
Can you see where this effort is going?
What, too many questions?
Note: This is a forward looking statement, Blah, Blah Bla :-)
Would I be wrong if it was the selfsame folks who buy the BS the shows are slinging?
Cramer admitted a crime on videotape why hasn't he been arrested?
but, which airhead said "The fundamentals of the economy are strong" today?
yes, true, Fox spliced Biden speaking months ago where he was QUOTING McCain 'the fundamentals of the economy are strong'. Stop watching Fox and maybe you will catch the tricks like this.
Well, for one: I don't watch Fox News. And for another: it wasn't Biden. It was an Obama economic advisor, Christina Romer, who said that similar quote to McCain's on MTP.
why you asked the question if you already knew the answer.
I googled it. I guess I should have just done that in the first place. Anyway, I read a bit more and discovered that Romer was responding to something Obama had said the previous day. He said something that was similar to what McCain had said when he said "The fundamentals of the economy are strong". Obama said that America needs to key on the fundamentals that are sound: eg. the worker, companies, etc.
I just caught a blip of this news clip and wanted to know what was the source.
I think I heard about that myself. I think the cheerleader in chief is trying to change the psychology to boost consumer spending.
starting by hiring someone who was actually right about the economic crisis
Ron Paul is available?
being right for the wrong reasons still counts as being wrong...
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions
Does that mean the road to heaven is paved with bad?
Paved with gold, on loan from China.
As a long time subscriber, I cancelled this week. That was my way of making a statement.
Questions have been asked if they are profiting from it.
Really, John? You wanna take another look at that sentence? Because if that's what you actually meant to write...damn.
Please tell me you were distracted. Please.
“CNBC should publicly declare that its new overriding mission will be responsible journalism that holds Wall Street accountable.”
That is no substitute for white collar crime enforcement to operate as a deterrence to what happened. What people like Krugman characterize as "fooling investors" is actually "defrauding investors" and there are laws on the books to deal with that.
In particular, PBS's NOW did cover the rating agencies, and apparently different criteria had been used to rate the mortgage backed securities as "AAA" than had been used on other "AAA" securities, yet investors relied on that "AAA" rating and assumed that these mortgage backed securities would perform satisfactory.
As far as the derivatives are concerned, I'm not sure whether criminal violations occurred. Certainly, it operated like insurance, but was called something else and avoided insurance regulations. I certainly don't support bailing dollar one of the derivatives. The media likes to lump the two separate issues under the label "toxic assets", but we've seen the nice big bird flipped by the largest derivative peddler, AIG, at the American public, as they tell the Feds to bail them out, but won't tell who they're passing the bailout funds to. I think they're entitled to every cent of their bonuses - they're doing a fantastic job of ripping the public off. If you can run your business into the ground, and get a $170B thank you, then you're doing something "right".
Needs to be turned into something "criminal".
Thanks Jon for posting this thread
This fits perfectly in Facebook
Co-anchored by Maria Bartiromo:
On 13 June 1999, Bartiromo married Jonathan Steinberg, son of investor Saul Steinberg. Jonathan ("Jono") is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WisdomTree Investments, a financial investment services company in Manhattan, most noted for their issuance of ETFs, or exchange-traded funds.
Steinberg used Reliance as his base of operations. In 1969, he mounted a takeover of Chemical Bank, then one of the nation's largest financial institutions. Chemical and its allies in the establishment beat him back. President Nixon personally called Steinberg to dissuade him from continuing with his acquisition. In a now famous quote in Business Week, Steinberg said, "I always knew there was an Establishment ... I just used to think I was a part of it."
Mr. Cramer, tear down that wall!
No shit, our entire media system is broken...remember way back when they used to be the 4th Estate? where they actuall kept an eye(somewhat) on the crimes of our government and Wall St? - hey they might not have been perfect but they did a better job then they are doing now!
Isn't Fox News more destructive than CNBC since they have more viewers and has their tenticles in more areas than CNBC?
Jim Cramer, Maria Bartiromo and Erin Burnett are all corporate propagandist whores. The same goes for Larry Kudlow, who is rumored to be considering a run as the Republican candidate against Chris Dodd, in CT.
Pam Martens writing on Counterpunch.org on January 27/28, 2007, in an article, entitled, "America's "Money Honey" Does Davos: Maria Bartiromo: Poster Child for Crony Capitalism" Part I, wrote:
"Ms. Bartiromo is a bit off her game because instead of reporting the news, she has become the news....A strikingly attractive brunette nicknamed the "Money Honey" by Wall Street brokers, Ms. Bartiromo has been the subject of numerous articles in such mainstream media as the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal around the issue of her conflicted ties to a recently ousted Citigroup executive, Todd Thomson....Mainstream media sees it this way: the valiant CEO of Citigroup, Chuck Prince, had to fire Mr. Thomson because he had stepped over the ethics line at Citigroup by using corporate assets to potentially influence a journalist. (Once one of these big media houses spins the story in that direction, the herd piles on, irrespective of where the facts lead.)...The real story, in my view, is that Ms. Bartiromo, a journalist, should not have been riding around on Citigroup's private jet on speaking tours with Citigroup clients. She should not have been considering a $5 million TV show sponsorship by Citigroup while masquerading as an impartial business journalist on CNBC. (She has conducted at least 11 Citigroup interviews over a two year period.)"
Read the entire article @:
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens01272007.html
Pam Martens writing on Counterpunch.org on February 2, 2007, in an article, entitled, "America's "Money Honey" as Corporate Matchmaker: Maria Bartiromo and the Co-Branding of CNBC and Citigroup," Part II, wrote:
"Behind the recent media brouhaha over CNBC news anchor, Maria Bartiromo, accepting international flights on Citigroup's corporate jet along with speaking engagements for Citigroup clients, resides a far more sinister nexus between big business and big media: co-branding....While this international co-branding effort was overt, something more covert was happening here at home. Here's a quick check of the CNBC news content for the period December 29, 2006 to January 5, 2007. The following Citigroup personnel appeared on the news network to advance Citigroup's position on everything from stocks to global warming: Tobias Levkovich (Citigroup's top 10 stock picks); Kimberly Greenberger (Citigroup's analyst for retail store data); Lan Xue (Citigroup is bullish on Chinese stocks); Steven Saywell (Citigroup doesn't think you should sell the U.S. dollar); Hans Goetti (loss of investor confidence roils Thailand); Charles Boorady (how Citigroup thinks healthcare reform will affect HMO stocks). Week after week, the proliferation of Citigroup guests would suggest that Citigroup is not just one of CNBC's largest advertisers but a content provider as well....The co-branding effort is so engrained between CNBC and Citigroup that the Wall Street Journal reported that Charles McLean was the spokesperson for both CNBC's Maria Bartiromo and Todd Thomson, the Citigroup exec ostensibly ousted for getting too cozy with a reporter. What the Journal did not reveal is that Mr. McLean works for The Dilenschneider Group, the public relations firm that specializes in crisis management....Mainstream media has been buzzing about CNBC's failure to report on what has become a major news story. Other reporters have questioned why CNBC has so fiercely defended Maria Bartiromo's conduct with Citigroup. The answer is that neither CNBC nor Citigroup want the first class cabin's curtain pulled back on their co-branding scheme, the reason Ms. Bartiromo was on the Citigroup corporate jet."
Read the entire article @:
http://www.counterpunch.org/martens02022007.html
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C'mon, at this point is there ANYONE who takes seriously a single word this whining loudmouth utters? I think it's been conclusively shown over this past week that Jim Cramer is a freakin' circus clown with the ethics of a carnival barker. Nothing more. He's a hired geek spewing disinformation on behalf of a bunch of quasi-criminal high-finance insiders.
His advise about Wall Street turned out to be as honest and as useful as Dick Cheney's opinions on Iraq.
After Stewart got through batting him around Cramer went from being a wanna-be Howard Beale "populist" made-for-TV folk hero to a humiliated creepazoid phony who just might find himself facing a Congressional subpoena.
Game, match Stewart.
Let's not miss the point here. Stewart and his team managed to put it so plain, any one should be able to see the way the networks are purposely misinforming the public to the sole gain of executives atop their particular pyramid in cahoots with their class buddies. Rather than signing open letters to plead the networks to behave patriotically, we should sign petitions for congress to investigate the traitorous behavior of these snake oil sellers. As Jon pointed out, finances are not a game (unless you are a megazillionaire) to millions of Americans that had lost their hopes and dreams to Wall Street's professional scammers who bankrupted the nation. The networks know full well how to use mass psychology to steer consent towards a particular outcome, that's what they do! Remember these entities hold some of the most comprehensive databases with sociological, psychological and marketing information to determine exactly what public buttons to push to effect a particular trend. They have been the enablers of wars, election frauds, crimes against humanity, virtual bankruptcy of the commonwealth, what's next? Stylish shackles? This is the time to set the record straight.
You'd think he might have learned something the other night.
His new found humility seems to have up and left.
Take a look at Jim Cramer's MSFT recommendations over a 2 year period. You can see that he flip-flopped quit a bit and likely lost viewers money.
http://www.stocktagger.com/2007/07/jim-cramer...
from this guy. CNBC is only there to take your money and give it to the people who sponsor them. Listen to guys like Marc Farber and Max Keiser...NOT inflation ist like Krugman or Roubini, unless they are not talking about the economy. Peter Schiff was only wrong on the decoupling thing but he may still yet be proven right so listen to him too.
Anyone making long term investment strategies based on anything CNBC, Cramer, FOX Business, etc. reports deserves what they get. No one with any business acumen takes these idiots seriously. They're little more than another avenue for the neo-con sound machine to spew yet more of its manufactured indignation.
AIG and the rest of the bailout criminals are going to steal ours and our children's money while shoving a stiff middle finger in our faces when we protest, and the Rick Santelli's of the world are going to say it's your fault for having made them do so.
...I came away from the TDS interview thinking that Cramer might be half-human because he didn't squirm, lie, prevaricate, filibuster, deflect or shit on Jon Stewart's desk like a typical conservative. But then he comes back with this crap. He's a punk, a punk, a punk, and a punk. I should have known. NEVER turn my back on a GOoPer or one of their lackeys.
I bet he did something to that dish he and Martha were cooking. You know....this reminds of that line from Fight Club:
"Fuck Martha Stewart. She's polishing brass on the Titanic."
Wow. Couldn't be more apt and Cramer, the craven loser, couldn't have played the part more aptly.
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