Jon Stewart made his bones as a real journalist last night, grilling Jim Cramer in a methodical fashion that revealed Cramer's tactics as possibly unethical, and at the very least suspect.
Cramer appeared sheepish as Stewart unveiled video from 2006 where Cramer effectively bragged how he manipulated markets whe he had his Hedge fund.
CNBC resident analyst Jim Cramer's widely anticipated appearance on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was fraught with consternation, condemnation and outright ridicule.
It also exposed the "financial expert" as little more than a talking head and shill for Wall Street hustlers, CEO's and players, who Cramer kept reiterating he knew were liars.
In response to aggressive questioning by Stewart, Cramer said that he was "chastised" and wrung his hands as he expressed remorse that the financial news network had done their work to expose rampant Wall Street corruption.
Stewart took CNBC to task for fanning the false fire that burned up Wall Street resulting in the worst economic environment since the Great Depression.
Stewart was calmly focused and asked precise questions, including whether it was "selling snake oil as vitamin tonic" in a way that was "disingenuous at best and criminal at worse."
At times Cramer looked and sounded as if he were near tears.
"Absolutely, we could do better," Cramer said. "There are shenanigans, and we should call them out. Everyone should. I should do a better job at it. I'm trying."
The interview was a result of a week-long back and forth over CNBC, with Stewart holding up Rick Santelli's comments about "loser" mortgage holders, and Cramer's call for investors to buy and hold Bear Stearns stock in the weeks before it collapsed.
"I think it was bad, what he said," Cramer told Stewart. "It's a terrible thing to be foreclosed on. They're not losers. They're fighters."
It was when Stewart confronted Cramer with several web clips from a 2006 interview where Cramer said that, as a hedge fund manager, he encouraged the manipulation of futures trades with trumped-up news, and encouraged that "because it's legal, and it's a very quick way to make money, and very satisfying."
Stewart admonished Cramer over and again, and ended on the note that the network dump the whole Cramer as Guru concept and the ad slogan "In Cramer We Trust" and get back to fundamentals on the reporting, so that Stewart could return to satire and jokes, "making fart noises and funny faces."
"I think we make that deal right here," Cramer said.
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