Jon Stewart is Doing What the SEC and New York Times Aren't

The interview Jon Stewart did with Jim Cramer, the lunatic financial commentator on CNBC, on Thursday, March 12th, did more to expose the calamity of the financial crisis than anything I've seen. The interview comes in two sections: watch the first segment so that you get how good Stewart is in the second. The second segment is the blow out.

Just as charitable foundations started by Steven Spielberg, Frank Lautenberg, and Elie Wiesel funded the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme by keeping their assets "invested" for long periods of time with only 5% withrawals annually (that is the minimum amount the government requires be spent from a charitable foundation each year), our 401 k retirement funds provided the money to the financial services industry with which to gamble on things like derivatives and credit default swaps. For years, we have been told to sock away money for retirement because Social Security won't be able to sustain too many of the Baby Boomer generation, just the very poorest. Remember Bush's first defeat was his attempt to privatize the Social Security system while the market was still quite bullish. No one bought his spin on a system that would merely give more money to the private financial services industry. Americans wanted the steady returns that Social Security used to provide. In the 1980s, Americans got over 8% return on their contributions into the system. By 2008, that return was down to 3.6%. That decrease in the rate of return was incentive to push more people to risk their retirements by putting money into the stock market for faster, more substantial returns.

Stewart nabs Cramer and the entire business of financial reporting, and once again, it's a comedian doing a "fake" news show that has pounced on the fact that the financial networks are merely pretending to be educating and informing viewers. No, they are not teachers, but unscrupulous rumor mongers and cheerleaders for an amoral and corrupt system of greed. CNBC and the hawkers of easy money are part of the problem.