Showing posts with label Daily Show. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daily Show. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2009
Down Goes Cramer! Down Goes Cramer!
Here's the video of Jon Stewart completely eviscerating Jim Cramer last night. Cramer truly got crossfired. Hopefully reporters around the country took notes on what real journalism looks like. Glenn Greenwald hits all the right notes about the financial media's complicity in hyping the bubble mirroring the national media's obsequious "reporting" in the run-up to the Iraq War. Sadly, the proliferation of media has reduced the quality of journalism. Reporters worry so much about losing access to their sources that they never ask the tough questions. Landing the big interview, rather than breaking the big story, has become the measure of a journalist. And sadder still, a comedian has to show them how it should be done.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Accountability
What happened to accountability? There's a disturbing lack of it among our elites today. If you're a politician or pundit who told the public we'd be "greeted as liberators" or needed to go to war in Iraq so that Arabs would learn to "suck on this," then you are still considered a credible commentator - by other elites - on what we should do in Iraq today. If you're a bank executive and you've mismanaged things so badly that your bank needs a bailout to avoid bankruptcy, then you are just the person to navigate your firm back to health (while still shelling out million dollar bonuses to yourself and employees, of course). If you're a financial news channel that constantly hyped up the bubble and had its anchors simply repeat whatever CEOs told them, then you are still considered the first stop for financial analysis.
And if you're a conservative think tank that touted countries that embraced the type of laissez-faire reforms you champion, only to watch those countries self-immolate two years later...then you are still the go-to source on economic policy for Republicans. From Krugman:
And wide-open, loosely regulated financial systems characterized many of the other recipients of large capital inflows. This may explain the almost eerie correlation between conservative praise two or three years ago and economic disaster today. “Reforms have made Iceland a Nordic tiger,” declared a paper from the Cato Institute. “How Ireland Became the Celtic Tiger” was the title of one Heritage Foundation article; “The Estonian Economic Miracle” was the title of another. All three nations are in deep crisis now.If you thought Iceland, Ireland, and Estonia were model economies, why should anyone take your economic advice seriously? It would be as if liberals hyped the success of central planning in communist economies...in 1988.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
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