" While new regulation, legislation, and enforcement mechanisms are necessary, these alone will never change the culture. "

I'm glad you recognize this, Jim. Sometimes I feel like the god of regulation shows up too often here on this blog.

I think "greed" and "self-interest" is impossible to avoid. Nobody makes a decision unless it is in their own self-interest, even if that self-interest is feeling good about charity or fighting for justice. We benefit from every decision we make, or we wouldn't make those decisions. What we SHOULD abandon, however, is self-interest and greed AT THE EXPENSE of others. It is this type of greediness that is wrongheaded.

By the way, "greed" could be defined as "self-interest at the expense of others," so I'm not endorsing greed as a virtue, because it imost certainly is not.

For a long time I have hoped the so-called "experts" ;and "journalists" would be called to answer for the propaganda they sell the public. It was a delightful surprise to see Stewart do the job. The public must become much more demanding of the people in the media and not just swallow whatever they present to us. WE are much too tolerant of lying and liars, especially when they wrap it up in a pretty package that reinforces what we want to believe. We must put our wimpishness aside and demand truth even when it hurts. When corporate butt-kissers like those mentioned by justintime have such obvious ties to those they are supposed to be reporting on, they should not even be allowed to read the news without a disclaimer. We are way too accepting of such conflicts of interest.
The media let us down in the run up to the Iraq invasion and have let us down in this descent into economic chaos.

An excellent post making an excellent point. I originally watched with glee as Mr. Stewart "took Mr. Cramer down a peg or two" but found myself feeling less shallowly joyful at the demise of someone I saw as an enemy and more aware that what I was actually watching was a personal reckoning being made. The unfortunate thing is that Mr. Cramer was accepting personally what should have been (and indeed was by the words of Mr. Stewart himself) leveled against CNBC as a network and the financial press itself as a whole. God bless Jon Stewart for finally preaching to the television watching nation a message that should have been preached by far more people much, much earlier.

The unedited cuts on Daily Show website are worth watching. I, with Jim, applaud Jon Stewart for confronting the value issue. However, I didn't hear the Sunday School lesson (for the masses) that Wallis rightly highlights.

Jon Stewart had a very narrow target--which actually he was not real precise about. He apologized for making Cramer the face of CNBC (and financial journalism). He highlighted a couple people he thought did a great job. He targeted the backroom of Wallstreet--but then exempted most the people on Wall Street, many of whom he stated he knows, trying to do the right thing. Maybe the evil is systemic and not located in a couple invisible individuals.

I think he took on a target with a righteous indignation that I share. I think he may be uncomfortable pushing it to its conclusion.

This is the problem with preaching against evil. When we push the issue, when we get down to the specifics, when we arrive at the ends of where the evil has penetrated--we usually find it is not disconnected from our little own hearts.

It is very right to take on what Jon Stewart took on but it needs to be coupled with Wallis' post.

Further, it is hard to really take on news journalism (which was Stewart's primary target) by going through Cramer. He wants to call the serious news business to account. That is the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Nightly Business Report, and parts of CNBC. Taking on Cramer avoids the confrontation with what hard news journalism is, and is not, in this society.

Good notes and excellent last paragraph. I hope we will see this process, but taking on Media failures is dangerous stuff, the power of the press being still limited to those who have one. My question is when do we start to hear the voices of seasoned writers and journalists who got it right about this financial meltdown, or about the Iraq war, or about global climate change, or those who are getting it right now about the need for a single pay health care system , or peak oil , or the need for a new paradigm for food production.

I don't know the extent to which we hear the good writers. I might refine the question to "When will editors, producers, pundits, commentators and political advisors receive the voices of good journalists and give space to those voices?" They are the ones that "cross out information" or add exclamation marks to certain voices.

I recall writing a religion reporter challenging her use of a storyline that simply did not convey anything real. My summary of her response, "I know. But that is where the media storyline is at right now."

Jim Cramer is easy to scapegoat because he was identified with Wall Street, and because his show was so bizarre. Scapegoating is par for the course whenever things turn sour.

But scapegoating in lieu of defending ideas constitutes empty demagoguery. I have seen nothing resembling a principled defense of the trillions of dollars with which Congress is ostensibly stimulating the economy, but rather attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Jim Cramer and Rush Limbaugh, and praise of Barack Obama as a pastor, and the new Joshua.

Battling over personalities instead of ideas is a recipe for fascism, as the winning personality can demand absolute assent from the masses.

Golly Kevin47 you sure have changed your tune here on the use of the f word. So its OK for Rush to scapegoat, but not that vicious Jon Stewart and his "recipe for fascism". For those who wonder what I am talking about see our exchange on the "I Hope Rush Limbaugh Fails" blog article. Does this mean I won the argument, or is it only from comedy central that we are i danger of fascism? This Stewart story is really not a battle over personalities; it is about public anger over a the largest swindle in US history which has done serious damage to many peoples life savings. Part of prevention is the warning provided by examples of public displeasure and personal accountability.

Absolute assent from the masses? The bank bailout plans are consistently opposed by the masses and by many MSM commentators ( I think even you and I agree on this one). The stimulus plan has much more popular support. Also remember that little event we call an election?

You compared a radio host to Hitler, and I labelled that for what it was. I did not say that one could not ever evoke the term fascist in any context. I also did not say that Stewart is a fascist, nor do I particularly have a problem with him going after Cramer. He has a talk show, the purpose of which is to entertain.


Moreso, I was commenting on the fact that America seems to be ignoring the fact that trillions of dollars are being spent, so long as we can get our dander up over Mike Madoff. Do you disagree that elevating personality over ideas is a recipe for fascism? Do you think it is beneficial to project our anger over a recession upon a small handful of individuals.

I do think it valuable to reflect on how our present public life moderated through mass media depends so heavily on putting a face on evil, goodness, varied forces, etc.). Who is the face of Islamic extremism? Black America? The GOP? Religious Right?

It's wonderful to be able to name the journalistic malfunction and Wall Street excess as a person: Jim Cramer. It allows us to sit down those problems on a chair and lecture them. Good drama.

Does it contribute to our public life?

I don't like it when names are not named. For instance, much media reporting is repeating what the personalities (e.g. Obama, Pelosi, Stewart, whoever) say--but doing precious little reporting about who the personalities are behind the scenes.

And I don't like when names are focused on as an excuse for not reporting on the systems which define the playing field on which personalities must act.

So I am a hard consumer to please. But as Stewart emphatically said to Cramer--this is not a game.

In an interview setting, you have to put a face on the crisis. But the comparison to Sunday school is more problematic. If we are preaching a message, to carry the analogy, we should be able to delineate which ideas failed and which will succeed in their place.

I did not compare Limbaugh to Hitler. I compared him to Goering before Kristallnacht, and as I recall, used the same word you did : danger.

I am indeed wary of scapegoating but not of public accountability and even public shaming for criminal behavior or foolish pretenses of expertise and knowledge, or public deception. These are serious matters and accountability comes with having a public voice and a free press. But this financial meltdown, which I wrote more about below is not some kind of natural phenomena, and while there are general cultural habits that spreads the blame to some degree, there are large patterns of choice and large patterns of deception and key decisions urged and made by real individuals.

Generally fascist scapegoating focused on a few groups- Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, communists and built ugly stereotypes around whole groups of people to blame them for Germany's woes and vent the anger of the economically desperate German people. I see more of this in the popular anger against immigrants, than in what is happening now. So far I have heard far too much popular media blame placed on people who took out mortgages they couldn't afford to pay, and far too little on the people who sold lots of very obviously predatory loans to people who were being taken advantage of. My sister is a brilliant and successful financial adviser and insurance agent and a Republican who when she saw some of these loans were being sold by 2 people in her church , told them the loans were unscrupulous and unethical and that if they didn't stop they would be behaving in an un Christian way. They broke relations with her and have in this melt down both gotten into deep trouble and will probably lose their own homes.

These loans were not held by local banks but bundled and sold and given triple A ratings by assessors with a vested interest. The debt was then used as collateral for financial instruments and insurance on those instruments that were essentially bets. They went international.

My understanding is that for every dollar of mortgage debt there may be as much as 30 dollars of "products" sold leveraging that debt.

We are floating on a sea of debt and all of that debt has been "leveraged" into piles of imaginary money.

Its all about usury and selling lies about the magic ability of money to make money, and it is profoundly ugly. People make wealth, the earth makes wealth, wisdom makes wealth.

The system must infact be literally brought to account along with the many individuals who have crossed legal boundaries.

Every one who has gone too far in credit card debt or taken out equity loans for vacations etc. has only themselves to blame. But the entire country has been sold on the idea that private pension plans with a diverse portfolio were a secure investment built on a sound and very successful economic system. Many have lost all of that money, many have lost most or a large portion. Should there be no accounting for those who knew the flaws but continued to sell it as sound and reward themselves with megamillions?

What do you think is a proper accounting?

I think the fact that not all banks, investors, etc. went down the path you describe is also evidence that these risky paths were understood for what they were--and taken anyway.

I don't know if it is true--but I have read accounts of the plans for the first detonation of an atomic weapon describing a fear it would blow up the atmosphere. They proceeded. Just as we today know nuclear waste will plague us for many milleniums--and we twiddle our thumbs.

The human track record is plenty long to dispel assumptions that somehow we can assume well-meaning, intelligent, powerful persons will automatically act right and act smart.

Right on. Kevin can evoke the fascist label when he wants to. You can't Jonah Bark.

That isn't close to what I said.  He called Rush Limbaugh a nazi.  If he wants to stand by that he can, but it's a hysterical thing to say.

There is an excellent article in Harper's new April edition by Thomas Geoghegan, a union lawyer and author who works with the Catholic Worker Movement and is now running for Rahm Emmanuel's vacated seat. The gist of the argument is that by 1) removing state usury laws and having no cap on interest rates( since Reagan), in combination with 2) allowing legal routes for businesses to negate and evade contracts( retirement pensions, health ) with workers, and to prevent union organizing, certain economic outcomes were guaranteed. The economic incentives of these high returns guaranteed that capital would flow, or in his words "gush" out of manufacturing and into banking. That is how "investment banking" became the last bastion of US capitalism and why when it ran out of businesses to "invest" in. (Often drain dry and either discard or move to China), it invented new "financial products" , futures on futures, bets on bets in a spiral of debt and risk, and generated the housing bubble-loans on equity, and un-payable predatory loans that would once have fallen afoul of usury/ loan-sharking laws, all sold on the premise of an infinite flow of borrowed money and rising prices. Meanwhile people worked harder, were measurably more productive, but apart from housing contractors were unable to negotiate higher pay. (Hard to negotiate by withholding knowledge in a knowledge based economy).So the middle class shrank, and the money players assumed more power and let bankers / investors of others money operate without accountability.

One important point he is making is that regulation alone will simply not work to rein in the pattern set in motion by the loss of limits on interest.

He offers some ideas and possible plans to address this situation , but one thing that struck me is the depth and persistence through all human history of moral and practical opposition to usury, despite the similarly long history of any society's need for systems of credit. A healthy, morally sound economy must preserve a balance of power among the different players and at this point we know that includes the soundness of the Biblical concern for the land itself and the life of the beasts.
That balance of power, that sharing of the common welfare is the core spiritual truth in the ancient limits on usury. Since Reagan we have heard constantly about the excess power of government and the need to lower taxes but rather than spend less on government those who advocate these ideas spend more, mostly on the military, and pile up an equally onerous tax in the form of interest payments. The same interest driven debts have piled to an unpayable point in the "private" sector. It took a bizarre kind of intelligence to keep this high stakes crap game going. Our brightest and most ambitious graduates have gone into the financial sector and participated in a vast Ponzi scheme that has reached its limits. Our armies of empire, our war machines and "investors" have thought to bring down Babylon and perhaps we have.

I do not know the details of the analysis but fully agree with the spirit of the critique.

On the one hand I was smart and thorough critique and on the other hand I don't think it is needed.

Just like this whole enterprise was a very intelligent house of cards built by the best and the brightest--analysis of complex systems can appear very sound, even to those who know the territory.

Your comments from a basic ethical base and common sense. It amazes me how much sophisticated mischief can be avoided when there is a fundamental submission to simple ethics.

I don't know if usury was at the heart of this crisis. It would not surprise me. Regardless, I am quite sure if we followed the simple moral rejection of usury, we would have a set of behaviors, structures, systems, and perspectives that would put us in a much clearer position to work our way out.

My question is why Cramer? I think the answer is because he went after Obama the week before. Stewart got his marching orders and did his duty like a good soldier. In the same way Wallis got his marching orders and went after Rush last week.

jeffp -- what evidence do you have for your theory?