So Obama talked to experts to to try to figure out what was going on and what should be done? Whoop-te-doo. A lot of good that did. He certainly didn’t make it common knowledge. He didn’t campaign on it when it would’ve mattered, did he?

What’s his track record on the economy? Stewart could go back and make the same video about things he and Gibbs and Obama’s adisors made back in the crisis days of last fall too. They could go back even farther and make them look downright silly. Why are we supposed to be admiring of Obama’s economic acumen. Are anyone in his administration regarding banking and the economy? Any of his people make better calls than Cramer?

The only reason you know about Cramer’s bad calls is because of Jon Stewart. It’s not funny to bring up his good calls, or why people even listen to him or give their money to him to manage or buy his books.

You know, you shouldn’t call me ‘Southern Strategy’ in the same post that you demonstrate you are a bigot. (Bringing up my nationality when it is not germane to the topic is a dead giveaway.) It merely reinforced my point that the GOP is systemically racist.

Dennis says: “And you’re a Canadian DVD reviewer. I’m going to guess every one of your reviews has been spot on, right?”

Reviews are subjective opinions. They can neither be accurate nor inaccurate. (Why the fuck do I have to explain this do you? Did you flunk out of elementary school?) My box office predictions, on the other hand, would be a proper analogy, and while they are not spot on every time (I completed fucked the dog on Borat, for instance) my track record is very strong.

If anything, I should be more confident. Everyone was saying the Jonas Brothers were going to beat Miley Cyrus at the box office, but I didn’t see it. Miley Cyrus has more musical talent, better screen presence, more charisma, etc. I’ve reviewed Best of Both Worlds (the concert film with Miley Cyrus) and Camp Rock (Disney TV movie with The Jonas Brothers). And even though I’m not in the target audience of either, I can tell when one works and one doesn’t.

Everything suggested that The Jonas Brothers wouldn’t live up to Miley’s numbers, in fact, they wouldn’t get half her opening. But everyone I read said they would do better. My gut told me they wouldn’t make half of what Miley made, but everyone else said they would beat her at the box office. In the end, I assumed I was missing some indicator that showed strength and went with an opening of $35 million. Big mistake. Had I gone with my gut, I would have been practically the only analyst I know of that would have accurately predicted that.

I can be persuaded I’m wrong, if the argument is sound.

“Cramer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. Do you pretend to be smarter than he is, Strowbridge?”

It doesn’t fucking matter. You could flip a coin and come up with more reliable predictions than listening to Cramer. Nothing you can say about him trumps that fact.

And you are doing your damnedest to ignore that fact.

“No matter what you call him or what you say his credibility is, people do listen to him. Obviously you listen to him. Obviously Gibbs and Obama listen to him or they’d have no idea what his track record was.”

They are people out there who track these things, so no, you don’t have to listen to him to know what his track record is. In fact, I recently heard a study that tracked 80,000 predicted from more than 200 TV pundits, and the TV pundits are on average worse than random chance. Fancy that. They are (nearly) all overconfident idiots.

“Seriously, the way you’re describing Cramer, a confident idiot who has made a lot of mistakes, draws too many similiarities to Obama right now.”

Speaking of overconfident idiot. Your assessment of Obama is about as reliable as a Jim Cramer stock tip.

“Obama didn’t tell people to get out of the market last summer. Why not, Strowbridge?”

Actually, back in 2007 he was talking with experts trying to figure out what was happening with the economy and what should be done about it. And he talked with both conservative and liberal experts on the matter.

“He was on the receiving end of a nice sweet mortgage of his own…”

This is factually incorrect. His mortgage was 1% below prime, and his job along would qualify him for that. Not to mention his book sales.

On the other hand, McCain has (had?) a credit card with a $500,000 limit at 0% interest.

That is not kosher.

And you’re a Canadian DVD reviewer. I’m going to guess every one of your reviews has been spot on, right?

Cramer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. Do you pretend to be smarter than he is, Strowbridge?

No matter what you call him or what you say his credibility is, people do listen to him. Obviously you listen to him. Obviously Gibbs and Obama listen to him or they’d have no idea what his track record was.

Seriously, the way you’re describing Cramer, a confident idiot who has made a lot of mistakes, draws too many similiarities to Obama right now. A guy who has to have His teleprompter everywhere He goes. A smart guy, ocnfident guy. People are sucked in by His words. The stock market is rejecting His plans and people are bailing. Obama didn’t tell people to get out of the market last summer. Why not, Strowbridge? What did He tell people to do the last two years with anything mortgage related? He was on the receiving end of a nice sweet mortgage of his own and huge donations from the same mortgage companies that got us in to this mess.

You gonna call Him a confident idiot?

His track record is worse than random chance. If he apologized for each mistake, he would be forced to apologize every single show.

He’s a confident idiot. The track record shows that to be true. I didn’t bring him up when he supported Obama because his credibility was zero then, and it is zero now.

He’s an ‘expert’ that is not worthy quoting.

This statement makes little sense, OW. If you’re blaming the crisis on brokers, ok, whatever, but you’re about the first person I’ve read that is doing that. If you’re under the impression investors would should or would prefer to do all their own trading online with no help from anyone, you haven’t spent more than five minutes in any financial institution. I’m guessing that’s the case.

The selling is panic selling. It’s not coming from brokers. It’s coming from people wanting to hold on to what little they have left. Most brokers are telling their clients to stay calm. It’s no easy task.

He supported Obama. He sold that on TV too. When he makes a mistake, he apologizes on TV. He let poeple know what a monumental mistake he made in believing Obama would govern as a rational-thinking moderate.

Which proves that the turnaround is near, because most individual investors are schmucks- they buy when the market is high and sell when the market is low. Any decent advisor is going to tell people to start accumulating stocks now.

By the way, learn how to use words. Nobody has “literally” lost their ass in the stock market. So now we’ve found that you can’t count and you can’t write. Yea, you’re the guy I would want advising me on my investments.

But he’s a confident idiot, and that’s what sells on TV.

LOL. Let’s start with Allen Greenspan — wrong about almost everything.

I agree there’s plenty of blame to go around, but the John Stewart piece is accurate (and funny as hell) because it places most of the blame on the market boosters (most of whom are Republican) who were telling people to buy buy buy when it was clear that we were at the end of a stock and housing bubble.

I don’t think it’s funny that people have lost their savings and their houses. I _do_ think it’s funny that a guy like Cramer (whose stock picks tend to do worse than the market average) still has a television show. The guy’s an idiot. And don’t get me started on Kudlow — a bonafide moron.

They’re scaring the same people that thought (and for the most part, still think) that terrorist Mexicans are going to eat our young. The problem isn’t that Obama’s plans are scary, is that his detractors are easily scared.

I work in the brokerage industry and I hear the brokers tell me what their customers are saying. A lot of them have literally lost their asses, and they don’t want to lose it all. It’s a whole new wave of panic selling.

Sounds to me that people are scared of the situation, not Obama.

Nothing out of Obama’s or Geithners or Bernanke’s mouths is calming them right now.

If Obama did try to “calm the masses” so to say, you’d accuse him of “ignoring the problem” and “lying to the American people”.

Investors don’t like uncertainty.

Investors deal with uncertainty all the time. Nothing in the market is guaranteed. If the investor class doesn’t like uncertainty, they should find a new line of work.

What an odd article Sen. Bayh wrote. He correctly notes that this collection of spending bills was written last year, but was never passed as a result of “legislative dysfunction” (translation: Republican obstruction and Bush administration inattention).

These spending bills provide funding for a wide range of everyday federal government function. Yet he doesn’t suggest even a single area where “waste” should be cut.

Odd.

I’m not the kind to attempt mind-reading. I wonder why he would write an opinion piece advocating spending restraint without suggesting even one expense that should be restrained.

He’s never going to win this argument, because all the facts are against him. He’s not smart enough to recognize that, so he will continue to make himself look stupid.

This is what Japan did, and it cost them a decade of economic growth.

Deficit spending during downturns in the economy is the smart thing to do, so says Paul Krugman, Yale graduate, best-selling author, and Nobel laureates.

Where were all you fiscal cons the last eight years? Seriously. It would have been nice to have you guys on board when the Republicans were spending like drunken sailors on a misguided war and idiotic shit like abstinence-only education and faith-based initiatives.

Just give it a rest. Come back in a year.

Deficits and Fiscal Credibility
A Democratic senator says no to a huge federal spending bill.

This week, the United States Senate will vote on a spending package to fund the federal government for the remainder of this fiscal year. The Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 is a sprawling, $410 billion compilation of nine spending measures that lacks the slightest hint of austerity from the federal government or the recipients of its largess.

The Senate should reject this bill. If we do not, President Barack Obama should veto it.
…..
Now is the time to win back the confidence and trust of the American people. Congress should vote “no” on this omnibus and show working families across the country that we are as committed to living within our means as they are.

I’m no financial expert. I don’t even trust myself to do my own taxes. However, I understand that it’s probably out of line to expect Obama to turn everything around in less than 2 months. We ARE in uncharted territory, and we’re on the crest of an historic shift in this country – in politics, the economy, etc. I seriously doubt that you or even guys making their lives in finance (e.g., Cramer) really have a clue about what’s going to happen with the economy as a result of new policy. I, for one, am going to believe that Obama and his economic advisers are smarter than you, me, or Jim “Worse than Chance” Cramer. Although I don’t know what the hell is going to happen, I don’t think that Obama is going to try to run the economy into a ditch. I believe that he’s trying to enact policy that he thinks will help. I doubt that this is an uninformed opinion on his part.

So, in summation… calm the hell down. Obama and his advisers disagree with you and the rest of the conservatives. We already knew that before he came into office. Howling about it just seems dumb. If this shit’s still as bad or worse in a year or two, well… then you might be in a better position to make a convincing argument. Right now, though, with Obama’s approval rating so high, and with him just taking office 6 weeks ago… you sound like a partisan hack jackass.

You’re reading an Ann Coulter book… shudder…

Whatever, Qib. Not being rude, but we’ve beaten this trivial point to death. Even without the money, which I see no reason to doubt him, but you do, he has been a supporter. I’ve heard him on TV. He was a big supporter of Rubin as Tsy Secretary under Clinton. Called him the best Tsy Sec we ever had. So not surprised that he supported Obama. And 100 G’s to this guy is not a whole lot, at least it wasn’t before Obama became President.

We were howling alright, mambo. I’ve got a couple more chapters to read to finish the new Ann Coulter book tonight, but if you want to give me a time period I’ll tell you what and how loud we were howling for any given time period. Things have been lousy for a long time, especially the financials. Even when we were at 14,000, a lot of things sectors were having a lot of difficulty. Look, I’ve said it before, Obama is not to blame for what is going on, but his plans are scaring the heck out of a lot of people. I work in the brokerage industry and I hear the brokers tell me what their customers are saying. A lot of them have literally lost their asses, and they don’t want to lose it all. It’s a whole new wave of panic selling. Nothing out of Obama’s or Geithners or Bernanke’s mouths is calming them right now. That may not be their fault, but in general, folks are not too comfortable with what Obama is doing nor what it’s going to do for their stock portfolio. 0% return on T-bills is a whole lot better than losing another 20%, and until they can make heads or tails with what Obama is going to do, they prefer preserving what little capital they have left. So they sell.

Honestly don’t know why that is a point of dispute. Investors don’t like uncertainty. No matter how confident you are that we will recover and come back soon, we are in uncharted territory, and we’ve been told too many times things will get better. People have heard it all before. They’re scared and they’re beaten down and now they are tired. So they go to the sidelines. And sorry, but it’s especially disconcerting to hear Obama and his advisors getting into a pissing match with a radio jockey when all this is going down.