Stock Market

When is a billion-dollar loss a bonanza? When the person suffering it is one of those greedy Wall Street types the MSM loves to hate. Check out how, in opening this morning's show, Today cast the situation of Bear Stearns Chairman James Cayne:MATT LAUER: Payday! His company imploded and thousands of stockholders went bust, but the Chairman of Bear Stearns cashes in and gets $61 million dollars.…

Do you think the federal government guaranteeing $29 billion in a loans for JP Morgan Chase to take over Bear Stearns is a good idea? It really doesn't matter what you think, according to CNBC's Jim Cramer. Cramer defended the move by the Fed from any potential public scrutiny on CNBC's March 24 "Squawk on the Street." "The American public don't know jack," Cramer said in response to a…

CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer came under fire recently for telling viewers Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) wasn't in trouble just days before the investment bank tanked. He has finally admitted some fault. "No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble," Cramer said on his program March 11. "If anything, they're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from Bear." The following weekend,…

With Eliot Spitzer gone, Chuck Schumer moves to the head of the list of smugly self-righteous New York pols. So it was particularly satisfying to see Sen. Jon Kyl [R-AZ] put Schumer is his place on This Week with George Stephanopoulos today. A guest with Kyl for purposes of discussing the economy, Schumer clearly came in with a game plan: to analogize President Bush to the man who presided over…

"Good Morning America" economic reporter Bianna Golodryga narrated a segment on Tuesday's show that featured grainy black and white footage from the 1930s and two references to the Great Depression. The ABC journalist also featured clips from Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to amplify the warnings of impending economic doom. While discussing the collapse of…

He'd probably like to take this comment back, but then again there are probably many things CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer has said that he'd like to take back. In a response to an e-mail posted on his Web site on March 11, Cramer said Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC) wasn't in trouble and advised the writer to keep his money in the investment bank: "Dear Jim: Should I be worried about Bear Stearns…

For more than a week, NewsBusters has been pointing out that media seem to be adopting the 1992 Bill Clinton playbook of presenting the economy as being in much worse shape than it really is.On Sunday, former Clinton administration adviser George Stephanopoulos took this doom and gloom posture by repeatedly depicting the nation as already being in a recession. In fact, he began the most recent…

Jim Cramer is known for wearing his heart on his sleeve. But the host of CNBC's "Mad Money" normally lets his emotions show over matters financial. In August, for example, he went ballistic at Ben Bernanke, pleading with the Fed chairman to lower interest rates in the face of widespread home foreclosures.This morning, however, Cramer got verklempt not over the discount rate but at the falling…

Granted, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) is a trade organization which will, as trade organizations do, try to put the best face on a bad situation. And granted, part of the press's job is to filter through hype and false sunniness to report the truth of what's really going on. But that is most emphatically not what the Associated Press did with yesterday's NAR report on the state of…

You reap what you sow. Nothing could be truer when it comes to the American economy. According to CNBC "Closing Bell" host Maria Bartiromo, if the media continue to push doom-and-gloom economy stories, they will make the economy worse. "[T]he truth is, ["Today" co-anchor] Meredith [Vieira], it doesn't matter if we're in a recession," Bartiromo said on NBC's February 6 "Today." "We can talk…

Two weeks and two rate cuts later, CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer has a revived faith in the U.S. stock market. On January 18, Cramer appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and warned if the government didn't intervene and prevent the failure of two large insurance companies, Ambac and MBIA, the Dow Jones Industrial Average would drop 2,000 points in the upcoming weeks. Cramer…

Can you remember where you were at any point during the four years of the Jimmy Carter presidency? Most people who were alive don't look favorably toward the economic situation during those years. But MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, who was gainfully employed as a member of the Carter administration, might look back a little fondly. When he criticized President George W. Bush about the…