By now many of you have had a chance to watch Jon Stewart dissect the world of Mad Money Cramer.
Initially the comments about Cramer were none but acerbic. But I've sensed a softening after seeing him plea his case. Some of that is due, no doubt to the civil nature of the tough-love conversation that Stewart conducted, more is due to the fact that Cramer is in fact a Democrat. I'd like to explore another reason in more depth that has surfaced in several comments in the various diaries on this subject; may I suggest that many, if not most of you grab a mirror while I grab mine?
Mirrors ready? Let's see where this goes.
How many of you have:
A) A home mortgage that is currently upside down, or have used your house as collateral above 50% of its current value for a loan?
B) "Invested" in the stock market on your own?
C) "Invested" in real estate?
D) "Invested" in futures?
E) "Invested" in your retirement with a 401K stock plan?
F) Allowed your IRAs and/or other retirement funds to be "invested" in the stock market?
WHY did/do you do any of these things? (those of you who didn't/don't, go ahead and skip to the poll and proceed to flame)
For me, it is for "financial security", the hopes of maintaining a roof over my head, food on the table, enough money to pay my internet and pajama bills. And if I'm fortunate, to have money left over for travel and other 'non-essentials'. I've dabbled in all of the financial options listed above, though cautiously in each. I've never studied other schemes; frankly I've never been that interested. The common strategies I know about seemed good enough to take care of my financial well-being. Conventional wisdom told me so. Pessimists? Well, I just hope they're wrong in the long run.
Pollyanna I'm not. I knew all along that there is risk in all of these things, but like most people I'm optimistic about the future even as I continue to criticize the present. I knew several years ago that the housing market was ripe for a crash when I was told that 25% of the housing market was being inflated by "flippers", many of them from out of state (that being Arizona). It didn't concern me. The markets will go up and down and up again, said my slightly reasoned optimism -- as long as the population growth doesn't stall entirely, life is good. Same for the stock market and everything else. The government has our backs, I thought, at least in the long run -- we learned much from the Great Depression, it ain't gonna happen again (rrriiiiiight).
I don't think I was alone in this optimism. It wasn't until last year that we who weren't following economics closely, and with open-eyed skepticism, found that the roller-coaster is subject to a downside far larger than most of us imagined. And I didn't learn much of that from the mainstream media right away, I learned it here at dKOS where some really fine news aggregators and market skeptic analysts started to continuously shine the light on radically irresponsible mortgage practices that poisoned a large chunk of our financial industry.
A ponzi-scheme beyond most of our imaginations had been built from amazing dreams of wealth without responsibility. Did some of the financial wheeler-dealers fully understand the depths of what they were doing? Sure. But many simply have a larger drive to make "Money", Mad Money.
I've watched Cramer's act when visiting my brother; he frequently hammers management that aren't making sound investments in their company's future -- I never detected anything but a sincere desire to drive the market up, frequently to the point of agitating for the removal of Boards of Directors of under-performing companies. And it isn't always about financials, he criticizes product strategies as well. He is what many of us here are, a man with an opinion (sometimes reasoned, sometimes not so well) on what inspires him the most.
For those of you who've never watched Cramer's show, and it IS an entertainment show with an over-the-top obsession about money, it's all about cheerleading, everyone is stroking everyone else's desire to make more money. Cramer frequently issues mea-culpa's on bad picks, but it is really a casino milieu. Serious gambling with an absolute faith that eventually, everyone makes money because we will always end up with better products, better workers, better productivity, better management, better solutions to all of our worries; and that means we're always heading for brighter days.
And that's what makes the CNBC's and WSJ's of the world so insidious, they play a game well beyond the gambling world of blind luck, and they spin the game on our faith in the future, on our faith in our fellow humans. They shill for a vision not so very far from the financial aspirations of most of us, they're FANS, not reporters and that's how they behave. Trouble is, obsession is never a good thing over the long run, whether it be over money or anything else.
These are just my observations, your mirrors are your own
Peace.