Jim Cramer vs. Barack Obama

Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:49 pm

Jim Cramer host of CNBC’s Mad Money has now blamed President Obama for spreading fear and causing the stock market to drop more by taking on too much change and too radical of an agenda. I think Cramer is dead wrong, because he is looking at this only from a Wall St. point of view, and forgetting that Obama was elected to bring change.

Cramer is the latest media type to get into a fight with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs who said, “I’m not entirely sure what he’s pointing to to make some of the statements. And you can go back and look at any number of statements he’s made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the backup for those are, too. If you turn on a certain program, it’s geared to a very small audience. No offense to my good friends or friend at CNBC, but the president has to look out for the broader economy and the broader population.”

Cramer, in his response to the White House, argued that Obama should be listening to the stock market, “How much I wish it were true right now that stocks played less of a role in peoples’ lives. But stocks, along with housing, are our principal forms of wealth in this country. Only the people who have lifetime tenure, insured solid pensions and rent homes but own no stocks personally are unaffected. Sure that’s a lot of people, but believe me, they aspire to have homes and portfolios. If we only want to help those who have no wealth to destroy, we are not helping the majority of Americans; we are not helping the broader population.”

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I hate to break this to Jim Cramer, but the stock market does play a lesser role in people’s lives now, because the money that they had in the market was wiped out last year. That money is long gone, and people aren’t blaming Obama for the loss. Cramer favors more money from the government to clean up the mess, which is why he is so unhappy.
He also came out of the closet as a Democrat, “To be totally out of the closet, I actually embrace every part of Obama’s agenda, right down to the increase on personal taxes and the mortgage deduction. I am a fierce environmentalist who has donated multiple acres to the state of New Jersey to keep forever wild. I believe in cap and trade. I favor playing hardball with drug companies that hold up the U.S. government with me-too products.”

He believes that Obama’s agenda is too radical for right now, “But these are issues that we have no time for now, on the verge of a second Great Depression. This is an agenda that must be held back for better times. It is an agenda that at this moment is radical vs. what is called for. I am proud to have voted for the Obama who I thought understood the need to get us on the right path, and create jobs and wealth before taxing it and making moves that hurt job creation — certainly ones that will outweigh the meager number of jobs he’s creating.”

I like Jim Cramer, and I watch his show Mad Money, but I think Jim is only looking at this from one point of view. If Obama did what Cramer is suggesting, it might help the markets, but it would damage him politically. People didn’t elect Obama for him to bring about an incremental agenda. I think the problem isn’t Obama’s but with the Wall Street people, who having trouble coming to grips with an administration that doesn’t believe that they are the whole economy, and isn’t going to cater to them.

This is a bumpy adjustment period for Wall Street, but once things turn around, these same people who are blasting Obama will become his biggest cheerleaders. The market may not like it, but Obama is doing the right thing for America, and contrary to what Wall Street seems to believe, they are not Main St. America. Regular folks aren’t as worried about the market because they are about jobs and healthcare. This is the reality that Wall Street needs to understand.