Mud wrestling in Midtown
Posted
Mar 11 2009, 06:54 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Last we heard from those two lovebirds, CNBC's Jim Cramer and "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart, each was accusing the other of being a terrible, horrible, awful human being. Or something like that.
Now they're going to face off Thursday on Stewart's program, airing on the Comedy Central network. Given the egos at work, it could be a lot of fun.
A veritable mud-wrestling match between two very smart, quick-tongued men.
The spat began on March 4, when Stewart aired an 8-minute segment trashing CNBC. The impetus for the segment was thought to be payback after Rick Santelli, a CNBC correspondent in Chicago, backed out of an appearance on Stewart's program to discuss his rant in opposition to President Barack Obama's mortgage rescue plan.
Nobody but nobody on CNBC was spared in the segment, which Stewart said had actually been put together to air before Santelli's appearance. It has generated a ton of traffic on the Internet.
Cramer, host of the "Mad Money" program, was shown in several clips telling viewers either not to worry about the market or, as he did memorably in September, to "buy buy buy." And there was a clip of Cramer seeming to endorse the stock of Bear Stearns a week before the investment bank collapsed in March 2008 and became part of JPMorgan Chase (JPM).
The excitable Cramer fired back on the "Today" show: "A comedian attacking me. Wow. He runs a variety show." And he complained about the Stewart segment in a long piece on MainStreet.com, a site powered by TheStreet.com, the investing site that Cramer co-founded. (The Street.com is an MSN Money partner.)
The complaint was about the Bear Stearns clip, and it was substantive. Cramer wasn't endorsing Bear Stearns as a stock; he was saying customers who had money in the investment house shouldn't worry.
Stewart conceded the point in a segment on his Monday program. But he also aired two clips, one that aired a week or so earlier, where Cramer first said he liked Bear Stearns shares at around $69 and a second that aired seven weeks before on another network, when he did specifically recommend the stock.
Do we think the tensions will be high?
Could be.
The two will also certainly talk about Cramer's complaints about the Obama administration's handling of the financial crisis, which have been loud and consistent.
He believes the administration has been too slow with its plan to stabilize the financial system, and he thinks the details so far suggest a concept that's too complicated and likely not to stabilize the financial markets.
He has never been a fan of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The reason: Geithner had been president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank last fall and was involved in the decision to let investment bank Lehman Bros. fail last fall, a decision that essentially crashed the stock market.
Moreover, Cramer thinks the idea of raising taxes now or soon -- as the economy is struggling -- is loony, although he actually believes affluent Americans should pay more in taxes. And he thinks the demonization of Wall Street and business generally doesn't help matters -- a point JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon also made today in a New York speech.
Stocks have fallen substantially since President Obama took office; the Dow finished Wednesday down 16% since Jan. 16, the last trading day before the inauguration.
