Jon Stewart is a brilliant man, the court jester of the modern USA. Like the jester, he is able to make people see and think about things they would rather sweep under the carpet, and like the jester, he is able to get away with it precisely because he makes us laugh as he shows us how bad the world really is. He makes us think...
I firmly believe that people act on their basic instincts. Even very smart, very devious people, their actions can be explained by psychology, what Terry Pratchett would call "the psychology of the individual". What are their drives? Greed? A desire for more? Looking out for number one? This is a basic human drive, an example of evolutionary psychology. A desire to be accepted by society? This is also a basic component of evolution, the advantages of being popular, of being part of a community.
Jim Cramer is clearly despicable, but he also is a window into the minds of the people who brought about this crisis.
Jon Stewart is helping us see the real Wall Street and we should thank him for that. Just like everyone, myself included, the Cramers of the world are driven by this mixture of greed to push the boundaries, and the restraint of society. We have all done despicable things. The difference is that their despicable actions cause much more damage to other people than ours do. All of the powerful people and executives I have met, no matter how good people they are, have a blind spot on their impact on others. It is, let us say, a psychological necessity to survive in the job. If they worried about what other people thought on a minute-to-minute basis, they would go into stress overload and fail. The blind spot is a necessity to power. The counter balance that makes the difference between evil and good at that level is more to do with beliefs and ideology than a genuine care for individual people they are affecting.
So we have Cramer, who has done many despicable things. It's finally catching up to him. But let's take a cue from Stewart and widen this to CNBC:
It’s the gap between what CNBC advertises itself as and what it is.
What do you think is the role of CNBC?
CNBC could act as — No one is asking them to be a regulatory agency, but can’t — but whose side are they on? It feels like they have to reconcile as their audience the Wall Street traders that are doing this for constant profit on a day-to-day for short term.
We are a reality based community. Let's put on the reality hat for a minute here. What does CNBC think that the role of CNBC is? The answer is simple: profit. Their role, like that of any company, is to make money. This is the law. Watch and/or read The Corporation. Any publicly listed company is required BY LAW to have as its sole goal the increase in shareholder value, which is narrowly defined — it's not social value, it's money value. Corporate social responsibility is only permissible if it improves the company's ability to make money — which it does only if the company uses it for marketing purposes. And the legal window is narrow. Corporate earning are delivered quarterly. Every four months, the company must improve the value of the shares or suffer the consequences.
Thus for CNBC. Their primary revenue is advertising, and their advertisers care about their ratings only. So, during the market bubble, CNBC optimized their revenue by doing what they thought would give them the most viewers. If that means pumping the status quo, can you blame them? I know you will.
But what if you want to go beyond blame and solve the problem for the future? You must resolve to change the way that companies like CNBC are seen by their viewers. If their viewers want entertainment and validation and easy fixes — Fast Money — then that's what CNBC will give them. If their viewers want Reality, then CNBC will give them reality.
My point here is that fixing the problem is going to take more than blame. It's going to require that we change the fundamental way that our society looks at what's happening. Like Jon Stewart, we must be more skeptical and change the economics for CNBC and their ilk. WE as a society must demand that they deliver facts not entertainment, and WE as a society must understand the difference between an entertainment channel and a real news channel.
Until we do that, we are setting ourselves up for the cycle to be reborn again and destroy our children's fortunes as it has destroyed ours.