Jim Cramer in October, 2008.
And while any president will be an improvement over the current one, there is a growing belief on Wall Street that Barack Obama has the capacity to lead us out of this wilderness while John McCain does not. I’ll go a step further: Obama is a recession. McCain is a depression.
Now listen to Jim Cramer in March, 2009.
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
Glenn Reynolds notices that, well, yes, the stocks haven’t been doing too well lately. And the financial system doesn’t seem too healthy yet. Chris Dodd is recommending the FDIC be allowed to borrow $500 billion (yes billion) from the Treasury Department.
But there’s gold in them there hills; bargains waiting to be snapped up at a good profit to earnings ratio. This moment of crisis and opportunity is a good time to talk about health care. So Barack Obama is convening a focus group on health care.
For the second time in as many weeks, President Obama pulled together dozens of lawmakers, community leaders and business representatives to solve a pressing issue — this time, health care reform.
But the president’s focus-group brand of governing is starting to wear thin for some who say the sessions are more style than substance.
Obama held a similar summit last week to promote fiscal responsibility. Over the course of three hours, the 130 or so in attendance broke into five groups and then reconvened, and the president said all their suggestions would be boiled down into a final report in 30 days. Soon after, the White House went ahead and released a $3.6 trillion budget anyway.
Now that the White House is using the same approach for health care reform, some wonder what Obama expected to learn from the folks he met with Thursday that he didn’t hear during two years of campaigning. …
So what’s the next topic Obama might focus group? “If I had to take a guess, I’d say climate change,” Franc said.
Focus groups are a fancy name for ‘consultation’, which is the favorite managerial mode of NGOs who want to do something but don’t know what to do. Meetings held with an air of urgency, while doing nothing, often give the impression of accomplishing something. Yet they are not wholly without consequence, because the fact they’re being held gives you a rough indicator of how many bits are still missing from the message and how many sandwiches we are short of having enough for a picnic. Whatever we thought before the elections can be confirmed to some extent, by what we have observed after the elections. Unfortunately, a posteriori can also mean ‘when you get kicked in the posterior’.
F U, Jim Cramer. You’re one of the 53% that got us into this, despite all the very obvious warning signs.
I have a name for the bright boys and girls who got us into this- “The Harvard Short Bus.”
I’d like to say I’m with exhelodrvr, but I have to believe in the power of redemption, and I have to hope and pray that the MSM will find that redemption by examining what they’ve done to the United States and beginning to report on Obama’s reality instead of his hope and hype. Short of that, we’ll just keep spiralling down (my 401K rollover is now below the buyin price of 6 years ago) while the traditional press keeps spinning Obama’s actions as “change” instead of what it really is: disaster. F
Another opportunity to repeat my ‘told you so’ mantra…
(ehem)
“DUH!”
Obama will stumble, gray-haired from the White House
Now I am just waiting for Colin Powell to express his remorse. These chumps are a bunch of self important frauds.
#2 Thrasymachus – you sir have started a new phrase in the fly-over lexicon. That is poetry to the current down-trodden masses.
Not that we feel down-trodden.. We feel like it’s time to pull our sleeves up – again.. One of these days…. One of these days… They won’t be able to depend on us to pull their nickers out of the fire. (Isn’t that the true evil in an Ayn Rand book?)
My question is:
“Did Obama focus while Wall Street burned?”
I have a name for the bright boys and girls who got us into this- “The Harvard Short Bus.”
I call them “interventionists”. But yours is funnier.
Busted flat in the USA
Run over by a train
I was feeling nearly faded
As the American dream
Baracky thumbed “Das Kapital
We sold him the rope to hang us
And turn us all right into New Orleans
I took out a second mortage
on my cardboard box under the overpass
The market blew while
O-dawg sang of doom
reality was slapping me
and we lost every dollar we ever knew
Hope and change is just two other words
for nothin left to lose
nothing ain’t worth nothing and it ain’t free
feeling low was easy now when
B Hussein gave us the blues
low enough for me and Obama the G
From the meth labs of Kentucky
to the California default
Barack ground our wealth into the ground
through bad and worse policy
in everything he tried
the commie turned us all into kulaks
one day up near Wall Street
The Dow sunk under 100
looking for 1929
and I think we found it
but I trade all of my tomorrows
for another November 4,2008
voting for the old guy after all.
Hope and change is just two other words
for nothin left to lose
nothing ain’t worth nothing and it ain’t free
feeling low was easy now when
B Hussein gave us the blues
low enough for me and Obama the G
(With apology to Kris Kristofferson and rhythm)
With O’s approval rating on the daily Rasmussan tracking poll still in the mid-60s, there clearly aren’t many Cramers yet. When and if my brother (retired academic) turns, I’ll know we’ve really turned the corner.
Although I agree with Cramer, since I never listen to his stock advice I am not going to listen political analysis either. However, there is an important unstated assumption here: Obama’s budget and stimulus plan are giving him ownership of the economy and its problems. The stock market may be the one institution powerful enough to bring the Obama administration to heel, if not to its knees. I’d prefer if principled and well-articulated Republican opposition could do that, but I’m not holding out for it. Another six months of this value-destruction and the 50% or so of us who have 401Ks will not only no longer blame George Bush for the problems in the economy and the market, we will view the Bush Administration years, especially the 2003-2007 bull market, as good old days.
Two women were discussing how Obama was going to save us.
W1. Well, I suppose the first thing he’s going to do is focus.
W2. Both of us?
W1. …Actually … All of us.
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”– Samuel Johnson
I wonder what it would take to get Obama to concentrate his mind rather than holding focus groups to keep the media busy.
Cramer’s Lament
(aka “Now and Then” by the Smithereens)
I’ve been torn apart since I met you
Don’t know how I’ll see it through
Troubled times are on their way
Wish that you could stay
CHORUS
Now and then
I feel like giving up
Instead I’ll cry
Alone
And wonder why
Friends tell me I’m acting like a fool
The way we live breaks all the rules
(The) lies I tell don’t seem so strange
Wake me up, I’ll change
CHORUS
Love, I can’t believe my lies drove you away
Love, I can’t believe I made you feel this way
Last time that I looked into your eyes
Telling lies that made you cry
Troubled times are on their way
Wish that you could stay
CHORUS
Love, I can’t believe my lies drove you away
Love, I can’t believe I made you feel this way
Now and then
Now and then…love!
I feel like giving up
Wrichard writes:
“Focus groups are a fancy name for ‘consultation’, which is the favorite managerial mode of NGOs who want to do something but don’t know what to do.”
But Obama knows what he wants to do, and as organizer of the focus group knows in general what kind of assent or cover he wants out of the focus group. Obama comes out of a community organizing background wherein stakeholders must have input and, in effect, rubber stamp the purpose of the meeting organizer. If there are dissenting voices, the organizer usually anticipates these, arranging for the supporters to outnumber or out-talk the dissenters. For the most part the focus group is one of many meetings and not consequential. The real importance resides in providing grist for the writer of the meeting minutes, who massages the meeting events in the way that is needed by the organizer. In the case of Obama’s focus groups, the media serves as the willing secretary, recording the statements of the pre-cleared guests whom the organizer can count on to say the required words. It’s all very tedious and predictable to folks who have done this innumerable times, but to newbies it seems like a brave new world of community empowerment.
“I have a name for the bright boys and girls who got us into this- “The Harvard Short Bus.”
That’s the understatement of the year. There are a number of good people who graduated from Harvard University. The host of this very blog is proof of that. However, perhaps the majority of them possess the intellectual depth of a Caroline Kennedy or an Al Gore, Jr. They are pseudo-educated idiots!
Good that Marx was a Moderate:
As for the bipartisanship, I’m much more optimistic. I think Obama is basically an empiricist, within the Democratic Party obviously but with no strong ideological commitment about what government would look like in his ideal world.
Many of the issues he’ll face are not necessarily ideological:
How to fix entitlements?
How to construct a stimulus package?
How to repair the deficit we’re wading into?
There are liberal and conservative dispositions, but we’re much closer to the world Daniel Bell envisioned in his book
“The End of Ideology.”
Plus, Obama doesn’t turn every policy dispute into a status or culture war. That alone will have a huge effect on changing the tone.
David Brooks
Re: Tony, post #5: Obama will stumble, gray-haired from the White House
You forgot to say “in 4 years or less”!
Let’s hope the ‘loyal opposition’ comes up with a really good candidate for the 2012 elections, because we all know BHO is such a mesmerizing speaker he can make people think a sh!t sandwich is caviar!
Cramer is mercurial, to say the least. In late 2001 or early 2002, he and Kudlow were praising Bush to high heavens when they shared the same show. Kudlow I could understand, but Cramer was just riding on his popularity coatails.
Cramer has seen the DJIA and S&P, etc., crater due to lack of confidence.
A lot of people are pulling their money out of their 401K and IRA’s and converting it to cash, savings of Money Market accounts, which may appear (by gross analysis) as “savings”, since they are out of equities (stock).
I watched O’Reilly for few minutes on the 11 oclock replay, as he was interviewing Neil Cavuto. Cavuto made the point that Obama is all over the map, instead of “focusing” on the financial crisis of the banks, etc.
Flipping the channels around, I caught Andersons Cooper (now in 360!) saying that solving the Health Care Crisis! was important in solving the larger financial crisis.
Different narratives for different folks. I guess.
Catching a few minutes of insanity on MSNBC, the attack on Bush and members of his administration continues with Rachel Madcow and O!lbermann.
Prediction: Obama and friends will not be able to resist the opportunity to create a circus this summer (maybe earlier if they get their focusing done) in going after the Bush Administration on various “crimes”, no doubt connected to the Iraq War, Black Water, Halliburton and such. Diversions everywhere, while Wall Street will continue to flounder.
The current administration’s management style appears to oscillate between extremes. Against the “focus groups” you can set the system of “czars”. Not Russian Czars, but White House Czars. The LA Times reports:
The Administration defended the Czar system in the following way, but the defense raised as many questions as it answered.
At some point the changes in style become substantive. From one point of view, you can regard time honored practices like governing through a Cabinet as a way of reducing variance in the exercise of power. Things used to happen in standardized ways. While there should always be room for innovation, beyond a certain limit there’s the risk that by ditching past methods of governance, custom will be reduced to the status of ‘serving suggestions’ on a can of Spam. You can cook it that way or eat straight out of the can. Drinking wine by pouring it into a glass is a serving suggestion. You can actually break the neck against the corner of the table and pour the contents down your throat. The problem with that unexpected usage is that you never know what comes next.
Harvard – they have no idea how much they have lost in their endowment. Carbon crap just that. In a few decades, Al gore will be speaking about global warming into his drool cup an a lovely Spring day and that lucky old sun will be right where she’s always been.
Mathematical models were run
On an economy under the gun
They developed a fraction
Representing contraction:
Profits-to-earnings – (The) One
— —
L3
I’m waiting for those April 401(k) statements to be received by over half of American workers. The quarter isn’t even over yet, and it looks bad.
Starling @12 says Obama’s budget and stimulus plans are giving him ownership of the economy and its problems. I entirely agree, and think we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Specter and the ladies from Maine, for had the Republicans succeeded in blocking the bill the Republicans would have owned the recession. By ensuring passage of the bill, our three heroes have tied the resulting catastrophe firmly onto the now visible for everyone to see Barack Obama, Liberal in Chief.
Were they Manny, Moe and Jack
Or Curly, Larry, Moe
That’s what I thought way back
But that just goes to show
Sometimes we get it wrong
Sometimes misunderstand
It’s taken me this long
To say the three deserve a hand
They saved us from ourselves
They made the country see
Pelosi and her elves
Were not what they should be
Public servants all
And keepers of the flame
Instead were all in thrall
To Obie’s little game
Of piling on the pork
And spreading it real deep
From Albany New York
To left coast shoreline sweep
To save all union jobs
And bankers perks as well
But mostly so us slobs
Will have to ring the bell
And beg our betters for
Some bread for kids and wife
That’s what they had in store
A shattered battered life
But thanks to Spec and Snowe
And Collins, ladies all
The public now does know
The Dems have made the call
To put the country down
To make of us their serfs
To give Obie the crown
Solidify their turfs
And otherwise command
Obedience today
Whatever they demand
Whatever they may say
But that’s all over, friends
Obama’s plan won’t go
It’s time to make amends
To Collins, Specter, Snowe
ExDem in Mich:
Let’s hope the ‘loyal opposition’ comes up with a really good candidate for the 2012 elections, because we all know BHO is such a mesmerizing speaker he can make people think a sh!t sandwich is caviar!
programmer says:
He is not a great speaker. Nobody really listened or heard him. They just needed something to justify their voting for him, each for reasons of his own. Since they had not heard what he said or knew anything about him, and he had no great accomplishments to speak of, it was just easiest to say, “Oh, what a great orator.”
But all fame is fleeting. And the MSM, those most base of lickspittle curs fawning and trembling at his feet, have lost a great weapon. Their one true weapon once was truth. But that clean, spare sword no longer fits their hands. They have forsaken truth and in so doing, have sown the seeds of their own destruction. More and more people are waking up from the electoral frenzy, and with really, really bad hangovers. It only takes 20% for an overwhelming victory in 2010. We will prevail.
The problem is inherent in the method. By using long term fiscal interventions or making confidential guarantees we have a situation where neither President Obama nor his critics can show whether or not things are being ‘solved’. This limitation is built into a condition where linear solutions applied over years (as in the stimulus package) are applied to a dynamic, complex system which is reacting on a much shorter time scale. David Brooks is reduced to ‘hoping’ BHO succeeds. And hope all you have, because there is no feedback information available to show whether or not the actions taken so far are helping or hindering; that is, except for economic indicators like the stock market, interest rates, jobless numbers.
So we are left to assume that despite appearances (i.e. tanking stock market), the Cavalry will come riding over the horizon at the appropriate moment, even though our information horizons don’t allow us to determine exactly where the Cavalry is. Hope aside, this inevitably means uncertainty because we are betting the farm on the eventuation of something whose position we can’t track. No feedback loop, ergo no way of knowing.
That uncertainty will contribute to perceived risk. I think President Obama should have backed off on the grandiose, multiyear plans and focused on doing stuff which we could quickly check for efficacy and adjust fall of shot as necessary. That’s why this idea of “focus groups” and czars makes me even more nervous, because it resembles the knots of people who mill around in a crisis, some unfocused and some too focused. We’re all waiting for information to arrive because it isn’t here yet. When it comes the probability distributions will collapse to a point. And then it will be interesting.
I have a name for the bright boys and girls who got us into this- “The Harvard Short Bus.”
I nominate Thrasymachus for an award of some sort. A good sort of one.
There are a number of good people who graduated from Harvard University. The host of this very blog is proof of that. However, perhaps the majority of them possess the intellectual depth of a Caroline Kennedy or an Al Gore, Jr. They are pseudo-educated idiots!
I’ve worked with many Ivy League graduates, and had the, ahem, joy of watching many more stumble about on the national stage. I’ve reached a conclusion or sorts. The people who graduate from Ivy League schools are no smarter or dumber, on average, than the folks who graduate from a typical State school. (With the possible exception of MIT – those guys are really smart.) Anyhooo, Harvard graduates its share of dolts just like Podunk State. But there are two crucial differences. One, the Harvard dolt doesn’t think he could possibly be wrong – he went to Harvard after all. Two, people who aren’t very good judges of character (and know it) defer to the Harvard Admissions office, figuring they wouldn’t let an idiot into the school, and assume this guy from Harvard must be as smart as he claims to be.
The thing about BHO that is most disturbing is that he doesn’t seem to care about the investor class (about 60% of America and dropping) or the stock market.
The more pundits like Cramer and Santelli line up to take shots at him for his idiotic policies, the less he will care, out of spite. And the rest of us will continue to take it in the shorts. Thank you, Mr. President, may I please have another?
E.N. – RE: “Prediction: Obama and friends will not be able to resist the opportunity to create a circus this summer (maybe earlier if they get their focusing done) in going after the Bush Administration on various “crimes”, no doubt connected to the Iraq War, Black Water, Halliburton and such.”
Y’know, this has been a profound fear of mine, simply because of the unfathomable damage it would do to the whole concept of peaceful trantsition and the country as a whole.
But I am not so worried as before. Politics is a tricky and ephemeral business. I really think the only possible way Obamolberman and co could pull it off is if everything were going wonderful, and the rabid BDS’ers could indulge in their drivelling psychoses while more normal centrists who don’t like Bush could shrug their shoulders and say “whatever, send me a memo when it’s all over”.
But things ain’t wonderful. Far from it. If Olberman and Dems in Congress tried such a thing in this environment, trying to put a Bush administration in jail for holding the country together that is now flying apart under The One, I seriously wonder if…… well….. I won’t say it. Let’s just say there could be an extremely undesirable reaction to such a thing. (I think the same thing if a serious play for the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” were to take place).
Obama and Dems, by purchasing this economy lock, stock and barrel for a trillion plus of yours and my dollars, have given themselves no wiggle room at all for stupid games like prosecuting Bush officials or trying to drive Rush and Sean off the air. They would have to be serious serious blunderers to even try, given the possible reaction that would result.
Oh….. wait……..
Regarding the czars, Ol’ Sheets Byrd is onto something. Obama has seen the turmoil congressional hearings for Cabinet appointees create, even before he started nominating his own set who came with more baggage than a New Jersey Debutante on a two week trip to Florida. He doesn’t want his real henchmen to get held up in that rat’s nest.
It’s very clear that Obama has almost zero respect for the traditional way of doing things, or for any sort of checks or balances. He is all about “cram-down” politics. Do unto other as quickly as you can. He has no fear of ever being on the receiving end of a cram-down, because he figures his opponents can be counted on to play by the rules.
Maiden Lane: that term is representative of the event horizon below which information won’t be allowed to escape. Bloomberg reports:
If you grant the Fed the benefit of the doubt, their argument for secrecy implies that in this case, it is better for the public not to know — and if they tell the Senators it will eventually leak — than to know because it will undermine confidence. But such an assertion undermines confidence in itself and may make people fear the worst when it would be better for them to know the facts. As Shakespeare put it, the unknown is often a more daunting prospect than a real, but known peril.
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
But this brings us back to a point I’ve been trying to make again and again. How do we know we’re getting it right in a situation where the feedback is either due back in years or is classified? If we can’t know the facts, then the public policy debate on the crisis is, to use another Shakespearean phrase, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Somehow we have to return the debate to rationality. This is too much like reading auguries among sorcerers.
I’ve read that intelligence operatives (spies) of the Soviet Union told Stalin that the Germans were going to attack him in 1941. Of course, Stalin had the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which said no such thing was possible.
He had the correct “intelligence”, but refused to believe it because it conflicted with that which he wished to believe. And millions died.
What happens when the fantasy world of politicians collides with the reality world?
What happens when those carbon cap and trade policies run up against the hard, cold truths that solar and wind just won’t cut it in many parts of America in replacing the baseline electrical load?
What happens when for some reason American investors don’t recognize that this is a “great time” to buy stocks because the “profit and earnings ratio” is so favorable?
Blank out. There is no logical response to the projections of a wishful imagination confronting the real world, except “blank out.”
Mr. Fernandez, “He won!”. That trumps it all, doesn’t it?
Jim Cramer: voluble weather vane.
Hath thou no shame man
Maiden Lane = they weren’t screwed?
What would Freud say ?
Maiden Lane = Whore’s Alley ?
Who in Hell would EVER come up with a holding company named just so… ?
And not just once…
But ML I
ML II
ML III
is Maiden Lane = Merrill Lynch (ed)
Well…
Perhaps the third time was to be the charm…
You socials crack my demented funny bone. For more than forty adult years I’ve watched you squeal in both delight and fright; convinced Your group was the key to peace and prosperity. Got news for you: I’ve watched 9 different administrations spend their way to the top of this historically high precipice, fueling “wealth” bubbles along the way. Soon I expect you will ‘throw the bums out’ and restock with a fresh set from the political farm clubs.
History is doomed to repeat because you are what you are. Swayed by the same rhetoric, driven by the same fears, hopes, and impossible dreams.
You are the roller coaster. You can be great at times and pathetic at others and I wish I could be one of you.
maiden lane is a small street in downtown NYC the leads to the FED building.
It is just off of Broadway below the Civic Center.
Steve LeCompte writes the “CXO Blog” on the efficacy of various financial prediction strategies. One of the things he regularly does is a “guru analysis” in which he collects the statements of some financial ‘guru’ over several years and compares them to actual performance. It’s a very popular feature.
He’s just done the same for the President’s beliefs about the stock market, and what that might mean for investors.
Conclusion:
“In summary, the President’s statements since taking office indicate that he views the stock market as an unreliable and low-priority indicator of the socioeconomic value of his policies/tactics. Investors should probably expect no favorable policy shifts.”
One marker of Obama’s ignorance of financial matters is that his family did not have an interest-bearing checking account until 2004. That’s presumably when he began to understand the profit-to-earnings ratio.
If you read his last couple of paragraphs, it is clear he supports O’s basic policies. Just wait until times are better and it is easier to roll over the public. This makes him and others like him, quite dangerous.
Obama has focus groups and “superaides” simply because he is nothing more than a talking head, programmed to his lines off his teleprompter. Without his prized teleprompter his is clueless-truly only a mouthpiece for those who write the script. Think Katie Couric without the blond highlights
Cramer is a tell for the center left new york establishment. He appeared for the first time on Hannity’s radio program. His shift is a body blow to the Obama administration.
Cramer is a lifelong democrat and would have never endorsed McCain.
Walt @25 thinks
we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Specter and the ladies from Maine, for had the Republicans succeeded in blocking the bill the Republicans would have owned the recession.
Obama ‘owns’ the economy now, he will start his next phase of preaching “Buy those wonderful profit AND earning ratio stocks”, “Invest in America”, and “Give It Time” slogans.
There will be a host of pundits and analysts agreeing with The One, saying realistically two years’ too short to see a turnaround.
By that time, America (rest of the world too) will be so heavily invested in the Obama Plan, pulling out abruptly will be unthinkable by the general public.
Obama is a recession. Pelosi and Reid are a depression, and Obama has put them in charge.
OsamaHusseinIslamObama 2012′
(the terrorist choice)
-It’s never to early to campaign-
Hey Schitz, I agree, you have to watch out for
those ice cream socials. They’re ruining everything.Ding….what was that bell? Oh it’s meds time. You swallow that pill not Schitzie, don’t hide it under your tongue.
The GOP lost for the same reason it did so well over the years, pandering to stupid, reactionary small minds who got their little heads filled up way past capacity by talk show hosts and/or mega-evangelists. That is why McCain lost, the bubble on Bushbotic stupididy and incompetence sank the GOP along with all the fatheads who claimed the ship was unsinkable and only stopped to get ice.
“stupididy”
Copyright that one, son. It’s too good to let go to waste. Or is that “waist”?
All your dictionary are belong to us.