Erin Burnett and Jim Cramer made an appearance on the TODAY Show Tuesday morning, filled with much the same rote nonsense that you hear on the TV every day. How can President Obama, as President, dare to do more than one thing at a time? There are too many bills for Erin Burnett to read, in between reality show appearances. And Jim Cramer just can't understand how a number of issues all dovetail with the economy. Seriously, watch this guy as he mocks the stem cell research order, because sure, there's no way at all that scientific innovations might impact the economy at all! There's no "stem cell research" button on the set of Mad Money that makes a fart noise. SHREWD INVESTORS TAKE NOTE, I GUESS.
Naturally, the ongoing war of japery between Cramer and Daily Show host Jon Stewart came up:
JIM CRAMER: A comedian's attacking me! Wow! He runs a variety show!
MEREDITH VIEIRA: Okay, but you know what he's saying about you, that you advised investors to buy Bear Stearns. You said you were taken out of context.
CRAMER: On October 6th, 2008, I came on this show and did something you're never supposed to do if you have a stock show. I said people should sell everything. That was thirty-five percent ago. Whatever he says about Bear Stearns, this or that, that was a call that should have wrecked my career, and it would have if the market had gone up.
Anyway, Meredith Vieira makes Cramer watch last night's riff on the Daily Show, and, in exquisitely uncomfortable side-by-side boxes, you get to watch Cramer react.
VIEIRA: Did you make a mistake?
CRAMER: Did I make a mistake? Anytime you recommend a stock and it goes down you've made a mistake. Here's a shocker, almost every stock is down. Almost any stock you recommended is bad. Warren Buffett, I could run tapes that would make him look like a fool. This is a terrible market, which is why I told people to sell.
And if every investor had been listening to Jim Cramer, how would the Dow look?
Anyway, Cramer and Burnett, sizing up the crisis in banking and with the auto companies, recommend that nobody do anything. It's a little weird to hear them suggest that it's just TOO MUCH for the administration to work on health care when their advice on the banking crisis is to "forbear" and wait for everything to work itself out.
Jesus, and then this: responding to Warren Buffett's warning that the economy is "headed off a cliff" and that the Dow could fall to 5,000, Cramer bleats: "I think the administration should attack Warren Buffett, instead of the little guys who come on TV and say that the averages are down a lot. Why don't they go after him?"
To which Viera queried, "Little guys ... like Jim Cramer?"
[WATCH.]
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