The Heterosapien

re: Jim Cramer on Jon Stewart

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:29:35 -0500

Just found this in my drafts, dated 3/13/09. Never got around to publishing it and saying all I wanted to say, but I think alot of it is still applicable now, so I’ve decided to go ahead and publish it unfinished.

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A couple thoughts of my thoughts on the video:

It seems like Jon Stewart spends alot of his time blaming CNBC and Jim Cramer for the financial crisis. The truth is that there were many aspects of our culture and economy that got us entangled in this mess, only one of which was the financial media. In my mind, Cramer is one of the most down-to-earth and pragmatic (if overcaffeinated and entertainment-focused) of financial advisors; he relates to the world of finance professionals the way Gary Vaynerchuk relates to the established world of wine tasters and connoisseurs. It’s unfair that Stewart takes out his frustration on Cramer, rather than talking heads like Charlie Gasparino and Maria Bartiromo (or other, non-CNBC members of the financial media). They almost assuredly would not agree to come on his show and be berated the way Cramer did, hoping to show that he could take the criticism and admit his own mistakes (while not apologizing for those of his peers or of the rest of the industry) and was ready to start mapping a way forward.
It was unfair of Stewart to roll clip after clip sans context and without giving Cramer a chance to respond to them, shouting out tape numbers like he was reading off a docket. It’s obvious that the videos were taken out of context; I’d be surprised if the tapes were actually of Cramer confessing to taking actions of questionable legality (spreading negative rumors regarding tickers against which he held a short position, messing around with futures trading to give a certain impession about a stock, etc) he actually took as a hedge fund manager. He just seems to be explaining ways in which one can influence stock price as a manager that are not easily enforceable, in an unfortunately inarticulate manner.
It annoys me the way the crowd polarizes the discussion. They clap after every clever thing Stewart says, as though he had made some excellent point “against” Cramer.

Here’s the bottom line: Cramer, while at fault for many things, is not the one to blame for this mess. Furthermore, the way Stewart hung him out to dry is unconscionable. He likes to do this to the people he intends to berate, putting on the face of comedy and deliberately making them as uncomfortable as possible (see also: his 2004 interview on Crossfire) while subjecting them to a trial by media, where the laughter of an audience that has come that day for the sole purpose of being entertained serves as judge and jury. Don’t get me wrong: I like Jon Stewart and his show, for the most part. I agree with a great deal of his points about what is wrong with the media and respect our difference in opinion and viewpoint. I see his show as a campaign against the knownothing-ism of current politics and the frighteningly [11/09: Not sure what I meant to say…]

Love this statue. First picture I took with the iPhone.

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:17:06 -0500

Love this statue. First picture I took with the iPhone.

Photo

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:28:36 -0400

"Summer always feels endless until it suddenly ends…September is the Monday of months."

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:53:39 -0400

“Summer always feels endless until it suddenly ends…September is the Monday of months.”

- Jeff Scher, in “Summer Retreat” for New York Times’ The Animated Life blog (via britticisms) (via beautifulordinaire)

—

I got this feeling the first time I wrote today’s date.

“Don’t be a hero. Don’t have an ego. Always...

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:19:00 -0400

“Don’t be a hero. Don’t have an ego. Always question yourself and your ability. Don’t ever feel that you are very good. The second you do, you are dead.” —Paul Tudor Jones

Not only is Jones an amazing trader and reader of the financial markets as well as a class act all around, but many of his trading philosophies translate well into everyday life. (More here.)

jennabee: Regina Spektor - The Calculation. whoa. i’ve...

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:46:43 -0400

jennabee:

Regina Spektor - The Calculation.

whoa. i’ve listened to this like 5 times in a row. amazing.

I feel like such a tourist.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:39:03 -0400

I feel like such a tourist.

loving the new theme, “not quite”. still think i need to lighten up the background a...

Sun, 24 May 2009 02:08:08 -0400

loving the new theme, “not quite”. still think i need to lighten up the background a little though

only in france… (via iwantmyhotpocket)

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:42:42 -0400

only in france…

(via iwantmyhotpocket)

The only reason I will watch Transformers 2.

Tue, 12 May 2009 10:09:57 -0400

jgh:

In the film, Shia LaBeouf attends my alma mater.

hate to burst your bubble, but as i understand it he attends princeton, which is comprised of shots of penn and at least one scene in a well-known yale lecture hall. apparently penn just didn’t have the necessary brand name. as if that’s not bad enough, his character apparently attends a frat party at the castle, which as we all know makes him an insufferable douche by default.

(n.b.: i’m still going to see it, conscientious objections aside)

My Response to "Looking Beyond Wall Street" (NYTimes, 18 April 2009)

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:11:39 -0400

(original article here, dealbreaker commentary here)

as a wharton undergrad, i’m convinced the nyt managed to find the 3 stupidest and more boring people here, or at least to edit their comments down to cliched soundbite-worthy drivel. i’m sorry, but you were only planning on going into finance because your parents were pushing you into it? seems like (a) an awful reason to work 80+ hours a week for 2 years, and (b) somebody needs to grow up, ween themselves from the teet, and stop letting mommy and daddy choose what you’re going to do with your life. seriously, who are these people?

I agree with dealbreaker commenter #32, who said:

As a Wharton student, I feel the down economy had many positive benefits in that my peers and myself have been forced to rethink our values, consider alternative (possibly more fulfilling paths), but still ultimately land good finance jobs if we REALLY want them.

Sure the economy’s made things rougher, but it’s mostly just made people think a little bit harder about whether or not a job in finance is what they want, and to consider the myriad (often more interesting or fulfilling) options they have coming out of undergrad with a top tier business degree that is useful in almost any industry (or at least as useful as the average liberal arts degree). in fact, the recession has done good things for wharton by reigniting the entrepreneurial spirit we’re known for by pushing students to make blaze their own paths and consider where their real competencies lie.

in short, the nytimes article is cliched, myopic, and misleading (like most of their articles). those students are probably antisocial nose-to-the-grindstone keep-your-head-down “follower” types unwilling to make their own opportunity who would have ended up going into i-banking just because everyone else does, rather than taking the time to consider the wide range of options open to them.

Are Earmarks Bad?

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:06:45 -0400

squashed:

There’s nothing inherently evil about an earmark. Suppose a bunch of people write to a Senator saying that the street they live on needs to be widened to reduce congestion. There is already a bill before Congress to do that sort of thing, so the Senator throws in an earmark to make sure that some of the money gets directed to the place where his constituents think it is particularly needed. Congress is writing the bill—and can decide whether it’s going to decide how the money gets distributed or whether to delegate that to somebody else. In the case of an earmarks, it’s making part of the decsion for things Congress considers important and delegating the rest.

Unless a Senator decides to slip an earmark into a bill that gives a lucrative contract to a private company that may or may not have donated to his campaign. Or perhaps the Senator decides to build a museum or something that doesn’t seem to have much to do with interstate commerce? Or perhaps an earmarks benefit only communites that voted overwhelmingly for the Senator. These are problems.

In between there are a whole lot of gray areas. An earmark might be added as a compromise to get a Senator to vote on a bill he or she did not think was in the interests of his or her state. A Senator might ask community leaders where federal funds would be useful, which might both identify where money could be productively spent and encourage those same leaders to stay in the Senator’s good graces. An earmark could be immensely large and bring a disproportionate share of federal money to a specific state. Like Alaska.

And when we talk about government waste, earmarks may be part of the problem, but they’re only a relatively small part. In the current spending bill, under 2% of the bill is earmarks. That’s still a lot of money—and it’s a good place to investigate if we’re looking for wasteful projects. But aggressive earmark reform isn’t going to transform the government into a lean, mean, efficiency machine.

It’s unclear that eliminating earmarks entirely would actually benefit anybody. On the other hand, eliminating earmarks that benefit specific companies or increasing transparency in earmarks or ensuring that earmarks can be discussed and debated.

My question for you: if these are defensible, “good” projects that are worth the government’s money, why not send them through the authorization process? Why do they have to be stuck in as an earmark?

coffee, a gatorade and old school girl talk on pandora: this business ethics paper should be a...

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:13:47 -0500

coffee, a gatorade and old school girl talk on pandora: this business ethics paper should be a breeze

Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:48:13 -0500

Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street:

This article gets to the absolute base (at least as far as Wall Street is concerned) of the Great Crisis of 2008. I don’t know what to say. It’s mindblowing. Try reading the Wikipedia articles on copulae or the Gaussian copula function in particular, for a look at the “simple” math behind the process.

Favorite commemorative plaques ever (over the library men’s room urinals): “the relief...

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:09:09 -0500

Favorite commemorative plaques ever (over the library men’s room urinals): “the relief you are now experiencing was made possible by ___”

billydalto: Mirando - Ratatat This track was unanimously voted...

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 12:53:54 -0500

billydalto:

Mirando - Ratatat

This track was unanimously voted the song of the evening in Ills Manor, where Mills and I are beginning another insane Saturday night. As usual, Bayou and Five were underwhelmed by the music selection but unwilling to offer any suggestions.

Responding To A Friend's E-Mail With Answers Generated By A Magic 8 Ball

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 04:31:37 -0500

Responding To A Friend's E-Mail With Answers Generated By A Magic 8 Ball:

adamfrucci:

thedailywhat:

Fortune-larity ensues.

laughed till i cried reading these.

Channeling

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 13:52:23 -0500

lolliblog:

I’d been hearing a lot about Christian Bale’s meltdown on the set of the new Terminator movie, so I decided to check it out on YouTube. Talk about venomous rage! Bale’s tone was by turns snarling and belittling, his withering diatribe laden with threats and profanity. All this, plus the guy kept going on and on and on. Just when you thought he’d finally gotten all the acid out of his system, some inner trip wire would get sprung, triggering another explosion. It was as if he was some kind of timed-release human cluster bomb.

He later apologized for his behavior, saying he’d “acted like a punk.” My trusty Webster’s defines “punk” as either “a male homosexual” or “a young hoodlum,” and while I am quite confident he didn’t mean the former, at 35 he is ill-qualified for the latter. I think he might better characterize his behavior as that of a prima donna, or even more accurately, a total asshole.

He went on to say he was probably channeling John Connor, his character from Terminator 4. Does that mean that Bale thinks of John Connor is “a punk”? I thought John Connor was supposed to be, like, humanity’s last hope. Or perhaps Bale suspected that Shane Hurlbut, the object of his rant, was an evil cyborg! Channeling, then, might also explain Bale’s alleged assault on his mother and sister a few days after the on-set incident. Who’s to say he didn’t think they might be evil cyborgs, too?

This got me thinking: why should channeling as a defense for the indefensible be confined to those in the acting profession? Even us regular folks can get caught up in emulating the behavior of certain high-profile individuals. I see no reason why channeling shouldn’t become a courtroom staple. “Your Honor, my client regrets his actions, but I must point out that on the day in question, he was channeling Hannibal Lecter…”

I think channeling could definitely become the Twinkie Defense of the 21^st Century.

While I generally try to avoid writing about celebrities, I feel I have to say someting here. I think it’s worth pointing out a couple of thing. First of all, any actor has the right to be angry when a set member wanders into his line of vision and breaks his concentration. When it happens more than once, that’s more than a mistake, it’s carelessness. When it’s on the part of the Director of Photography (rather than some guy who runs wires or sets up light), and it happens twice, that’s just ridiculous. Keep in mind that Bale is a method actor, meaning that he commits alot of time and effort to be able to put himself completely in the scene and mindset in which he is working. To make a metaphor, it would be like the Australian team’s coach accidentally swimming across Michael Phelps’ lane in the middle of a race, because he “just wasn’t paying attention and wanted to get a better look” at his swimmers. In that case, I don’t think anyone would fault Phelps for going off on the guy for 2 or 3 minutes and demanding he be fired. It boils down to professionalism.

What Bale does, while generally regarding as an “easy” job, is actually quite difficult and it takes dozens of hours of preparation to perform as well as he does. Is he well compensated? Certainly, but you can’t fault him for (vehemently and loudly) questioning the professionalism of someone who would walk across his line of vision twice in one shoot, during supposedly one of the more emotional and intense scene in the movie, where Bale is expected to be at his peak, award-winning, 9-figure salary earning performance.

looking for a good indie rock internet radio station/stream. any suggestions?

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:59:17 -0500

looking for a good indie rock internet radio station/stream. any suggestions?

I’m convinced the Detroit airport is the nicest thing about this awful, awful city. I had no...

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:05:34 -0500

I’m convinced the Detroit airport is the nicest thing about this awful, awful city. I had no idea it was so nice!