A pret­ty bril­liant saga played out over the last week on The Dai­ly Show. It start­ed when Jon Stew­art tweaked Rick San­tel­li and his wide­ly-pub­li­cized rant against home­own­er bailouts. Appar­ent­ly San­tel­li’s net­work, CNBC, could­n’t take a lit­tle joke and fought back, which only pro­vid­ed The Dai­ly Show with more com­ic fod­der. (You can watch the fol­low-up seg­ments here and here. Very fun­ny stuff.) Then, it all cul­mi­nat­ed last night when Stew­art brought Jim Cramer, a lead­ing CNBC per­son­al­i­ty and invest­ment advi­sor, on the show. Here, the jokes end and a long and dead­ly seri­ous inter­view begins, and we all get to see how the finan­cial media failed, if not betrayed, us dur­ing the rise and fall of the cred­it bub­ble. Sad that a come­di­an has to make the point. But I’ll take it.

As a quick side note, it should­n’t be said that no one ever warned the Amer­i­can pub­lic about the pro­gram­ming being put out by CNBC and espe­cial­ly Jim Cramer. Last year, David Swensen, who man­ages Yale’s multi­bil­lion dol­lar endow­ment (which has fared quite well dur­ing this decline, at least rel­a­tive to oth­er large endow­ments) took aim at Jim Cramer in the NYTimes, not­ing: “There is noth­ing that Cramer says that can help peo­ple make intel­li­gent deci­sions.” “He takes some­thing that is very seri­ous and turns it into a game. If you want to have fun, go to Dis­ney World.”

As usu­al, Stew­art cuts to the chase and says what has to be said. And gets a good laugh along the way…

What hap­pens when you take the 2004, Acad­e­my award-nom­i­nat­ed Ger­man film Der Unter­gang (The Down­fall) and turn it into a spoof? Here, the “down­fall” is all about the decline of the hous­ing mar­ket, and how Hitler becomes just anoth­er man with a home under water. There are some clas­sic lines here, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you looked to buy a home in recent years. Thanks Bob for the tip.

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