When Only The Clowns Tell The Truth
The best part of Stewart’s merciless takedown of Jim Cramer was the old videotape where Cramer brags about manipulating the market. Just a few months ago people would have watched that tape and nodded in admiration. But now it exposes him as a fraud and possibly a criminal. Every time Cramer would try to weasel out, Stewart would call out a time “2:20″ and his flak would play another damning clip. Why is this guy Cramer not in jail?
It is not just fools who are taken in by market mania. Even Sir Isaac Newton lost twenty thousand pounds in the South Sea Bubble back in 1720. This time around, the victims of Bernie Madoff include a Nobel Laureate (Elie Wiesel), a newspaper tycoon (Mort Zuckermann) and several foundations.
As Galbraith has pointed out, market mania happen every generation or so. Credit Default Swaps are the Tulips of our time. From time to time the economic engine overheats and needs to be reconditioned. But they seem to happen more frequently: every decade instead of every generation. The scale and depth of the fraud this time around is much greater than at any time since the 1920s. It is not a struggling immigrant like Mr. Ponzi who ran the biggest scam, but the former chairman of NASDAQ. “Sir” Allen Stanford didn’t just buy a title; he bought an island nation. Incidentally, Stanford himself was one of Madoff’s victims.
Fraudulent or at least self-serving behavior had become so commonplace that people would brag about it openly. Cramer happened to do it in front of a TV camera. Universities are not immune from such risque behavior either. As a small example, we had an Associate Dean award himself a coveted teaching award for writing a “vision statement” on the undergraduate curriculum. That would not be too bad, except that he has not taught a course in a class room of of any kind in at least twenty years. In the large scheme of things this is small potatoes: nobody lost their life savings over it.
Even Cramer’s shenanigans and the collapse of the market pales in comparison to the fraudulent evidence which was used to justify the Iraq war. Several thousand American casualties later, Arie Fleischer is still saying that we should be thankful to Pres. Bush for that war. Is he not aware that another comedian is lampooning W. on HBO in a show called
“You Are Welcome, America”.
Stewart and Ferrel are continuing an old American tradition . Mark Twain took down pompous river boat captains (Life on the Mississippi) and stuffy European Aristocrats (Connecticut Yankee) in his time. It may not be because comedians see the truth any better than the rest of us. They are in a business when they can,usually too late, speak the truth. They don’t always get away with it. Bill Maher spoke the truth about Iraq too early in 2001. Stewart took on Martha a couple of years ago, but could not have attacked a whole network until after the market tanked. Letterman could not have destroyed McCain until he was caught in his lie about rushing to Washington to save the economy: Letterman showed him putting on makeup for a TV interview in the same building.
We lost about 10 Trillion dollars in the stock market collapse over the last six months. Why shouldn’t we laugh a little at a bit player in the scam? The major players have already gotten away, as surely as bin Laden. They are laughing better than all the rest of us.
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