Jim Cramer on December 2, 2008:  “U.S. Will Not Have Another Great Depression”

Jim Cramer on April 3, 2009: “Right now, right here on this show — I am pronouncing the Depression over.”

The thing we will not have is over. And it’s the subject of Monday’s strip.

The reason the “experts” didn’t call it a depression before now is because they’re part of the problem.

The mainstream media was propping up the economy. They downplayed the warning signs of the housing bubble and the combination house-of-cards and pyramid scheme of the bogus securities markets. They knew, rightly so, that if the markets tanked, they’d be screwed.

The economy was in the crapper following the dot com burst. The fed and markets created and green-lit the synthetic securities and housing bubble in order to do what every good CEO does, put a band aid on the problem and get your golden parachute before the next sucker takes over.

I don’t blame Cramer, per se. The real villains were the real estate industry “experts” who went on TV and dismissed all talk of a housing bubble as nonsense. I blame every “news” program that decided to give those bastards equal time opposite reasonable observers who said that the pattern of near-geometric increases in housing prices which were being sold to people with poorer and poorer financial prospects was obviously doomed.

But the media outlets knew that as long as people kept buying houses they couldn’t afford, that the media outlets would be okay – filling their air time and commercial space with ads for real estate and financial services. Those are the numbers I want to see: how many column inches of the Washington Post and New York Times were filled with ads for real estate? How many for financial services? How many hours of commercial time on CNN and Fox were for real estate and financial services?

That’s why the media is hurting now – those ads are gone.

With each month that the bubble didn’t burst, our condition got worse. Each day, more and more people were being suckered into the system by a cowardly, ignorant and/or complicit media.

The argument being made by media and “experts” who are now trying to cover their asses is: you don’t yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater.

You do if it’s on fire.

And you try to make sure everyone gets out in as orderly and as safely a manner as possible and you make God damned sure nobody else enters. Pretending it’s not on fire or glossing over the risk just gets more people hurt. And making a buck at their expense of their suffering is pure evil.

– Steve

Stumble it!

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