In one of the most memorable Daily Show takedowns, Jon Stewart interviews Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC's "Mad Money," after a highly publicized week-long criticism of CNBC. Stewart grills the financial pundit about his responsibility as a "financial expert" and urges him to take on a more investigative role rather than accepting information given to him by corporations. Jon also shows Jim some old footage from Cramer's hedge fund days where he admits to the ease of manipulating markets. Lastly, Jon implores Cramer to rethink his strategy of finance entertainment when people's livelihoods are on the line.
You're listening to Comedy Central.
You've watch snippets of them for days, or meant to after your friends sent you the link. You twit blocked it on the interscape. People on TV have talked about how much people have talked about.
It ongoing grudge match between Daily Show host John Stewart and CNBC host Jim Kramer.
People staying in hotels are wondering why it's on the cover of their free paper. Tonight, the week long feud of a century comes to my head. Kramer Stewart in a twelve minute base off that could marginally increase the very rate Comedy Central charges for thirty seconds of advertising time. Welcome to Brawl Street.
Get ready to buy low and sell die.
New Daily Show. I just dislocated both my shoulders. I'm John Stewart, Baby, It's go time.
Just a few moments, the host of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Kramer. Jim Kramer, you're sitting right there, and I John Stewart of The Daily Show with John Stewart.
I will be sitting.
Where I'm sitting right now, probably not going to be moving. We'll be discussing the intricacies of the world financial markets as you can imagine.
I've been training all day.
What does PE stand for?
Play?
Starting?
How many stocks in the Dow thirty?
Biggest software component MICROS, biggest hardware component US Steel?
Wrong, maggot?
What is tier one capital? Term?
Capital's the core.
Measure of ex financial states of both primarily.
An equity capital and CAT reserves, but but also.
Possibly including your redeemable noncubultive preferred stocking.
To take ernest, let's do this thing.
Oh, I'm ready, baby, I've learned it all.
I've been studying. Did you know that the guy on the twenty was a president? But the guy on the hundreds just some guy? I didn't know that. So what was my opponent doing today to prepare?
He's welcome, Jim Crek what.
Yes?
To prepare for the skirmish?
She appeared in public with a convicted white collar criminal.
I'm not sure how that's gonna help him.
If you're mad at somebody like like John, make me this is John Stewart.
It's called now the pacing is cold. Hey, you did that very.
Well, mister Kramer. Don't you destroy enough dough on your own?
Show? Boom goes to dynamite. How weird is our world.
When Jim Kramer's on TV baking pie and Martha Stewart is the one who went to jail for securities fraud, that's weird. Let's get to the main event, what we've all been waiting for. Or one hundred and fifty or so people here, the host of CNBC's Mad Money, Please welcome to the program, Jim Kramer seven.
Said, how the hell did we end up here? Mister Kramer? What happened?
I don't know. I don't know. Big fan of the show to us, who's never said that.
Well many people.
Let me let me just explain you very quickly. One thing that I think is somewhat misinterpreted. This was not directed at you, per se, but I just want to let you know that we threw some banana cream pies at CNBC. You got a little obviously schmotz on your jacket from it took exception and then we decided to to hit you with pies.
I wouldn't the network, but I think the look at God, we'll come watching about myself?
Do the explorer? And I find myself? Last thing, of course, I say to myself, it's not about me. But then the feces things comes in. I'm thinking, could be about me.
Yeah, let me, let me explain the mindset behind what happens. So this fellow Rick Santelli, who works on your network, he goes onto the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and he says, uh uh, kind of a rant about loser mortgage holders, people that borrowed money that they couldn't afford to have, and they're losing their houses and why should we bail them ount And he turns and the traders all shout yes.
Screw them.
And to his credit, he's been against bailouts from the start. He's consistent ideologically.
But it struck us.
Here as a bad form, kind of ballsy for a guy who worked at a network that cheer led the very banks that were doing thirty one thirty five to one leveraged loans for themselves, yelling at people who lost their homes, it struck me as ballsy and maybe a little ignorant of the role CNBC and these larger banks played in the problem.
I dislike what he said. I thought that it was bad.
I think the people who are left in their homes are people who are taking two and three jobs. They are not people who should be foreclosed on. I didn't understand it. Maybe he is from a different economic background from me. I lived in my car. I don't think he lived in his car. It's a terrible thing to be foreclosed on. And they're not losers, they're fighters, and they're not getting a fair right.
Thankfully you said that.
But the thing I wonder about is, and this is CNBC sells itself as as financial experts.
I think that's the.
Slogan reporters and commentators, right.
But I believe it says we have the financial expertise that that you need, and they have the access to the CEOs.
Uh.
And yet they didn't catch any of this.
And here they are blaming people who don't have the financial expertise and saying that they're part of the problem.
Their problem seems to be linear.
It seems like the banks and those that cheer led them turned an arithmetic problem into a geometric one. They took a linear debt issue and by turning it into derivatives and securities and all that, now it's a gigantic problem. So so shouldn't we yell at them.
I think that everyone could come in under criticism because we all should have seen it more. I mean, admittedly, this is a terrible one and everybody got wrong. I got a lot of things wrong because I think it was kind of one in a million shot. But I don't think anyone should be spared in this environment.
So then, if I may, why were you mad at us?
No?
Because I was under the impression that you thought we were being unfair.
No, you had my friend Joe No Sarah on and Joe called me and said, Jim, do I need to apologize to you? I said, no, we're a fair game. We're big network. We've been out front, and we've made mistakes. We've got seventeen hours a lot of TV a day to do, but I.
Certainly maybe you could cut down on that.
I got an hour. I got one writer who's my nephew.
He sits in those apartment with the pajamas type and stuff away.
Well, you got the eighteen guys.
Aaron Burnett said, you know, in Jim's defense, he has to make these picks.
And I thought, is that a genetic condition?
Why Urette's pick it?
Can't you not?
I have scaled. But let's deal with the first second.
I mean, I would tell you that the show's evolved as the market got toughervolved.
Might be a strong word. Mutated.
Yeah, I don't mind that.
I've never helped myself out to be anything, you know, a true holmost safety in a lot of ways. But I would say that the first segments about the market. I don't want to get too granular because I don't want to. You know, people can watch me have money. But first segments about the market. Second segment I try to educate about diversification. Third, yes, I do pick stocks that I think will work, or I pick gold. I've been recommending CDs. I'm chastised.
I'm chastised, like a problem though isn't seemingly being wrong about certain things.
It's being all over the place and for people not knowing. For instance, I watch your show on Monday where you said, you know, people say we've hit bottom. I think this thing's going down another fifteen percent. And on Tuesday there was a stock rally about three hundred points and you were dancing on the grave of the bear market.
Guys.
Well, I said that if we only went down fifteen Well, I don't want to again.
I hear you, and you could.
Argue appreciate you talking to mere black. I'm five.
Come on, man, that's not true.
What I said was that it could go to fifty three to twenty. But if it went down there, you start buying anyway. But if things got better, if we saw substance stuff.
Then I would get more bullish. And City Group came out and said they made money.
I thought that was fantasmic oracle. Right, I'm four, so you could be five.
I'm speaking up to you.
All right, fair enough, we're gonna go away. We're gonna come right back with Jim Kramer right after that. So let me tell you why I think this thing has caused him attention. It's the gap between what CNBC advertises itself as and what it is and the help that people need to discern this.
Let me show you. This is the promo for your show.
Okay, all right, So this is Jim Kramer's promo.
An economy of free fall investments on the brink when you don't know what to do, don't panic. Kramer's got your back. Mad money with Jim Kramer, isn't.
That you know?
Look, we're both snake oil salesmen to a certain extent, but we do label the show as snake oil here. Isn't there a problem selling snake oil as vitamin tonic and saying that it cures in patago et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Isn't that the difficulty here?
I think that there are two kinds of people.
There are people come out and they make good calls and bad calls, and they're financial professionals.
And then there's the.
People who say they only make good calls in their liars. I try really hard to make as many good calls as I can.
I think the difference is not good call, bad call. The difference is real market and unreal market. Let me show you this is you ran a hedge fund.
Yes, I did for many years.
All you know a lot of times when I was short at my hedge fund and I was positioned short, meaning I needed it down, I would create a level of activity beforehand that could drive the futures. It doesn't take much money.
What does that mean?
Okay, this was a a hyperbolic example of what I was trying to get people that you had a great piece about short selling earlier. Yes, I've been trying to rain in short selling, trying to expose what really happens.
This is what goes on.
What I'm trying to say is and I didn't do this, but I'm trying to explain to people this is the genanicous like.
You were talking about that you had done it.
Then I was in articulate because I did trade. I barely traded the futures.
But I will say this, I am trying to expose this stuff exactly what you guys do, and I'm trying to get the regulators.
To look at We'll see that's interesting. Roll two ten.
I would encourage anyone who's in the hedge fund you to do it, because it's legal and it's a very quick way to make money and very satisfying.
By the way, no one else in the world would ever admit that.
But I didn't care.
That's right, and you can say that here.
Again, I'm not gonna say it on TV, So on TV.
Now, I want the Jim Kramer on CNBC to protect me from that. Jim Kramer, I.
Think the way you do that is to show, Okay, that's the regulators watch the tape, they realize the shenanigans that goes on.
They can go after this. Now they didn't catch made off. That's the shame.
When you talk about the regulators, why not the financial news network.
That's the whole point of this.
CNBC could be an incredibly powerful tool of illumination for people that believe that there are two markets. One that has been sold to us as long term put your money in four to one cage, put your money in pensions and just leave it there, don't worry about it, it's all doing fine.
Then there's this other market, this real market that's.
Occurring in the back room, where giant piles of money are going in and out and people are trading them and it's transactional and it's fast, but it's dangerous, it's ethically dubious, and it hurts that long term market. So what it feels like to us, and I'm speaking purely as a layman, it feels like we are capitalizing your adventure by our pension and are harder and that it is a game that you know, that you know is going on, but that you go on television as a financial network and pretend isn't happening.
Okay, First, my first reaction is soluly, we could do better. Absolutely, they're shenanigans and we should call them out. Everyone should. I should do a better job at it. But my second thing is is I talk about the shorts every single night. I've got people in Congress who I've been working with to try to get the uptick rule. It's a technical thing, but it would cut down a lot of the games that you're talking about.
I'm trying, I'm trying. Am I succeeding? I'm trying.
But the gentleman in that.
Video is a sober, rational individual, and the gentleman on mad Money is throwing plastic cows through his legs, shouting sell, sell, sell, and then coming on two days.
Later and going I was wrong. You should have bought like I can't.
Reconcile the brilliance and knowledge that you have of the intricacies of the market with the crazy.
Bullets I see you do every night.
That's English mastrating people like like adults.
How about if I try it?
Try what try doing that?
I'll do that?
Look anything, that'd be great.
But it's not.
It's not just you, it's it's it's it's larger forces at work. It is this idea that the financial news industry is not just guilty of a sin of omission, but a sin of commission that they are actually in bed.
With this idea.
We got in bed with them coming. I don't think that's fair, honestly. I think that we try to report the news, and I think.
That some people A couple of guys do this guy Faber and he's fabulous.
To other guys, he's fabulous, and he did, he's done. Some things have really blown the cover off a lot of stuff.
But this thing was ten years in the making, right, and it's not going to be fixed tomorrow. But the idea that you could have on the guys from bear Stearns and Maryland and guys that had leveraged thirty five to one and then blame mortgage holders, I mean.
That's insane.
Did that?
I'm sorry? You're absolutely right.
Uh.
I always wish that people would come on and swear themselves in before they come on the show. I had a lot of CEOs lie to me on the show. It's very painful. I don't have subpoena power.
But you're you're pretending that you are a due eyed, innocent Watch roll.
I mean, if I may just just roll show, roll to twelve, No, not to twelve.
Now you can't ferment.
That's a violation of ferment.
Yeah, you can't foment.
You can't create a yourself an impression that it stocks down.
But you do it anyway because the SEC doesn't understand it. So you I mean, it's that's the only sense that I would say.
To this illegal.
Now it's what two sixteen another's stock good luck people are focused on or nothing to be Apple.
Yeah, Apple is very important to spread the rumor that they both Verizon and Att decided they don't like the phone. It's very easy one to do because it's also you want to spread the rumor that.
It's not gonna be ready for macworld.
And this is very easy because the people who write about Apple want that story and you can claim that it's credible because you spoke to someone Apple, because Apple isn't and it doesn't.
They're not gonna.
Comment, you know.
I mean, I gotta tell you, you know, I understand you want to make finance entertaining, but it's not a game. And I when I watch that, I get I can't tell you how angry that makes me because what it says to me is you all know, but you all know what's going on. You know you can draw a straight line from those Shenanigans to the stuff that was being pulled at Bear and at AIG and all this derivative market stuff that is this weird Wall Street side?
Bet John, don't you want guys like me who have been in it to show the Shenanigans? What else can I do? I mean, last time I show you know.
I want desperately for that, But I feel like that's not what we're getting. What we're getting is listen, you knew what the banks were doing, and yet we're touting it for months and months. The entire network was, and so now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once in a lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best, and criminal it worse.
But Dick Fold, who ran Lehman Brothers, called me in, right.
He called me in when the stock was in forty because I was saying that, look, I thought the stock was wrong.
I thought it was the wrong place to be. Brings me in, lies to me, lies to me, lies to me. A known them for twenty years.
The CEO of a company lied to you.
Shockers, stop trading.
But isn't that financial reporting. Well, I mean, I guess what what do you feel like saying?
Look, I have called for star chambers. I want I want kangaroo courts for these guys. I really do.
I want indictments. We've not seen any indictments. Where are where's the indictments for AIG? I've told the Justice Department, here's the way you get the indictment.
It's very easy to get on this after the fact, the measure of the network and the measure of the matters.
CNBC could act, as you know, in some ways.
Look, nobody's asking them for them to be a regulatory agency, but can't.
Whose side are they on? It feels like they have to reconcile.
Is their audience, the Wall Street traders that are doing this for constant profit on a day to day the short term. These guys at these companies were on a Sherman's march through their companies financed by our four oh one k's and all the incentives of their companies were for short term profit.
And they burned the house down with our money and walked away rich as hell. And you guys knew that that was going okay, all.
Right, I have a wall of shade.
Why do I have Banata Kate cream pis because I throw them at see Do you know how many times I have pants CEOs?
And as Carly Simon would say, this song ain't about you.
Okay, all right, you're right. I don't want to personalize it.
But I think that we have reporters who try really hard, were not always told the truth. But most importantly, the market was going up for a long time, and our real sin, I think, was to believe that it could continue to go up a lot in the face of what you described, which is a lot of borrowing, a lot of Shenanigan's.
And I know I did. I'll bring it up.
Look, I didn't think that bear Stearns was going to evaporate overnight.
I didn't.
I knew the people who ran it that I had always thought they were honest. That was my mistake, I really did. I thought they were honest. Did I get taken in because I knew them from before? Maybe to some degree. The guy who came on from all Kovid was an old friend of mine who would helped hire men.
I trust or not?
In what world is a thirty five to one leverage position?
Saying the world that made you thirty percent year after year after year, beginning from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and seven, and it began became very But.
Isn't that part of the problem selling this idea that you don't have to do anything. Anytime you sell people the idea that sit back and you'll get ten to twenty percent of your money, don't you always know that that's going to be a lie? When are we going to realize in this country that our wealth is work, that we're workers, And by selling this idea of hey man, I'll teach you how to be rich.
How is that different than an infomercial?
Well, I don't think.
I think that that your goal should always be to try to expose the fact that you did that.
There is no easy money. I wish I had found made off.
I wish it ever literally shows called fast money.
I think that people there's a market for it, and you give it to them. And I think there's a.
Market for cocaine and hookers.
What is the responsibility of the people who cover Wall Street? Who are you responsible to the people in the four to one k's and the pensions and the general public or the Wall Street traders and by the way, this cast dispersion on all of Wall Street when that that's unfair as well.
The majority of those guys are working their asses off. They're really bright guys. I know a lot of them. They're just trying to do the right thing and they're getting kicked in.
This too true true.
I think that as a network we produce a lot of interviews where I think that there have been people who have not told the truth. Should we have been constantly pointing out the mistakes that were made? Absolutely, I surely wish we had done more. I think that we've been very tough on the previous Treasury secretary, very tough on the previous administration how they didn't get it, very tough on Ben Bernanke.
But at the same time, he's the guy Paulson's the.
Guy who wrote the rule that allowed people to overleverage.
Like trash him every night. I've called him a liar on TV? What am I going to do? Should we all call them liars?
I'm a commentator, we have and you could take issue with the fact that I throw balls and bears and I could still be considered serious. I'm not Eric Sevaret, I'm not Edward Armurrow. I'm a guy trying to do an entertainment show about business for people to watch. But it's difficult to have a reporter say I just came from an interview with Hank Polson and he lied his dorn full head off. It's difficult. I think it challenges the boundaries.
Yeah, I mean, I'm under the assumption, and maybe this is purely ridiculous, but I'm under the assumption that you don't just take their word at face value, that you actually then go.
Around and try and figure it out. So again, you now have become the face of this, and that is incredibly unfortunate.
I wish I had done a better job trying to figure out the thirty to one and whether it was always whether it was going to blow up.
It did once it did, I was late and saying that it was bid.
So maybe we could remove the financial expert and the kramer we trust and start getting back to fundamentals on the reporting as well, and I can go back to making fart noises and funny faces.
I think we make that deal right here, so that body ours I'm sharing to some reignize of sex come trying explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching.
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