Jon Stewart and the Cramer ‘takedown’
Joe Nocera says the talk show host’s approach to the financial crisis was unlike any other — now or ever.
It began, you’ll perhaps recall, with the Santelli rant.
It was Feb. 19, 2009, and on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” the discussion was about an Obama administration plan to help underwater homeowners. Becky Quick, one of the anchors, asked Rick Santelli, the network’s commodities reporter, who was at the Chicago commodities exchange, for his reaction. Santelli responded with an angry diatribe, describing homeowners who couldn’t afford their mortgages as “losers.” Turning to the traders in the commodities pit, he asked loudly, “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage?” The traders began booing. Santelli looked back at the camera. “President Obama, are you listening?” he shouted.
The Santelli rant caught Jon Stewart’s attention. He and his writers began paying closer attention to CNBC, and by early March they had prepared a show that was less about Santelli than about the inherent problem of producing a steady stream of “entertaining” business news, which was CNBC’s mission. Santelli had even agreed to be the guest.
Days before the show was scheduled to air, however, Santelli canceled. “The Daily Show’s” bookers quickly needed to find a replacement guest. They found, gulp, me.
In all the encomiums tossed at Stewart last week, as he ended his magnificent 16-year run at “The Daily Show,” almost everyone has made reference to “the Cramer takedown” — his famous 2009 interview with CNBC personality Jim Cramer. Having played a small role in the show that led to the Cramer takedown, I got to thinking about Stewart’s approach to the financial crisis and its aftermath.
Stewart had no special Wall Street knowledge, as he was the first to admit. What he had was a nose for a scam and an uncanny ability to articulate what the rest of us were feeling.
He mocked the way Wall Street firms paid ungodly sums to settle government charges without ever admitting guilt (a subject later championed, less humorously, by federal Judge Jed Rakoff). He lampooned the way dubious deals — particularly the notorious Goldman Sachs Abacus deal — were legal, even as they oozed with sleaze.
I hadn’t realized that I was expected to talk about CNBC that night in early March 2009; I had expected the topic to be AIG. But as I watched Stewart’s devastating dissection of CNBC in the green room, I knew what was coming. He had clips of Cramer on his “Mad Money” show encouraging viewers to buy stock in Bear Stearns just days before it collapsed. He showed Carl Quintanilla asking an embarrassingly softball question of Allen Stanford, who later went to prison for running a Ponzi scheme. (“Before we let you go, is it fun being a billionaire?”)
He questioned why the network, with all its savvy business reporters, hadn’t done a better job anticipating the financial crisis. His underlying question was whether CNBC was in the news business or the entertainment business. And if it was the latter, didn’t that mean that a lot of people were getting hurt by taking it seriously?
My role, it turned out, was to pile on. Which I did, even though I knew many CNBC personalities — especially Cramer, who was a friend. But I couldn’t disagree with Stewart’s analysis; indeed, I had long thought investors were better served shutting out the white noise that emanated from CNBC and other financial shows that offered stock tips.
Most people at CNBC knew better than to react publicly to Stewart’s spanking. But that wasn’t Cramer’s style. He complained loudly that he had been treated unfairly and practically demanded to go on the show to defend himself and his network. Eight days later, he got his wish.
Watching Stewart’s takedown of him again the other day-made me cringe, just as it had at the time. Instead of defending himself, Cramer sheepishly agreed with most of Stewart’s criticism. And Stewart was unrelenting, essentially accusing Cramer and his network of being in bed with the people it covered. “He got at the intimacy between the network and its subjects,” said Jason Ross, one of “The Daily Show’s” writers, the other day.
“I’m a guy trying to do an entertaining show about business for people to watch,” Cramer finally said.
“So maybe we could remove the ‘financial expert’ and (the slogan) ‘In Cramer We Trust,’” replied Stewart. “And start getting back to the fundamentals on the reporting.”
In all the criticism of the role of the press in the financial crisis, nobody has ever put it better. Nobody ever will.