The way I interpreted what he was saying, I got the impression he was using his position to the detriment of his own investors because he was short. Somehow, when these guys flop, they manage to walk away with full pockets. It isn’t so much hypocrisy as fraud.

I don’t especially approve of short selling. I think it is ok as long as all involved parties understand it is being done. In a Ponzi scheme, the whole thing collapses when the economy is down, thus deepening the crash. In a shorting scheme, the collapse comes in a boom, which may actually help the economy as a whole, but try to tell that to tho victims.

I agree with you about the government rather than the market being the root of the problem, but I didn’t see this interview as mindless Wall Street bashing. It seemed quite targeted at those who sought to profit at the expense of those who had been investing their retirement under the cultivated illusion of stability. Those investors should have known better, but Cramer hardly has any ethical high ground.

I find myself of two minds on the current state of the nation, as we extremists must in order to exist within a system so far from what we consider ideal. At this point I often think the left is preferable to the center even though it is farther from my goal. Our current system privatized profits and socialized losses truly seems the worst of both worlds.

Your comments re the Cramer vs. Stewart brouhaha are right on. But I think many of us who watch Cramer do so for precisely the entertainment values, not because we’re stock pickers or traders.

As Megan McArdle has said, there’s no money to be made over the long term in trading stocks. You can do better staying in indexes. If Cramer made a pile short selling–though some contend his hedge fund was a flop–and now condemns the practice, why should he be blamed for his success? Or changing his mind? Should we impose a hypocrisy tax?

Stewart has his own agenda, as everyone knows. Using Cramer as the whipping boy for all of CNBC’s notoriety as shills for the market seems like mindless Wall Street bashing. Just like Obama does. I no more believe in “In Cramer We Trust” than I believe in “In Government We Trust”–the very government whose regulatory agencies liberals so love, and which agencies are (see Fannie and Freddie) at the root of what’s been happening to my 401k.