Jon Stewart's 2009 Criticism of CNBC - Cramer On The Daily Show

Cramer On The Daily Show

On March 12, Jim Cramer appeared on The Daily Show with Stewart amid widespread media publicity that included a front page article in USA Today.

Stewart claimed CNBC shirked its journalistic duty by simply accepting information given to it by corporations, rather than playing an investigative role as a "powerful tool of illumination." Stewart stated his belief that such failure was due to too much emphasis on entertainment value and a lacking sense of journalistic responsibility.

Stewart aired archive footage of Cramer admitting to the ease of manipulating markets and commented that Cramer's on-air personality lacks honesty: "I understand you want to make finance entertaining, but it’s not a fucking game. And 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. 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 AIG, and all this derivative market stuff that is this weird Wall Street side bet." Stewart said of Cramer in particular, "I can't reconcile the brilliance and knowledge that you have of the intricacies of the market with the crazy bullshit I see you do every night."

Cramer disagreed with Stewart on a few points, but mostly acknowledged that he could have done a better job foreseeing the economic collapse: "We all should have seen it more." Not content with his explanation, Stewart showed videos in which Cramer recommended ways to drive down stock prices by spreading false rumors, deceiving the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and deliberately misleading journalists. Cramer admitted that he can do better, and that he can change. He also pointed out the mass illusion on Wall Street and the finance industry in general that, in the words of former Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O'Neal, "fixed income and credit (i.e. the economy) were no longer cyclical in nature", and that this illusion had permeated Wall Street and all other industries connected to it, including the finance networks.

Stewart also fired back at Joe Scarborough by telling Cramer to relay the message that the nature of The Daily Show's satire is not to be fair. In addition, Stewart apologized to Cramer for the personalized nature of the media coverage by saying, "You now have become the face of this, and that is incredibly unfortunate. Because you’re not the face of it, you shouldn’t be the face of it. You were the person that was, uh, I-don’t-know-what enough to stand up and go, 'Hey, that wasn’t fair!' Which it’s not, because this show isn’t fair, and you can tell ‘Doucheborough’ it isn’t supposed to be fair."

The interview ended with Stewart suggesting, "Maybe we can remove 'In Cramer We Trust' and go back to the fundamentals and I can go back to making fart noises and funny faces." Cramer responded: "I think we make that deal right here."