In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Jim Pethokoukis asks (in what has to be the dumbest burning question evah):

There was a lively exchange last night on The Daily Show between Jon Stewart and CNBC's Jim Cramer, in which Stewart hammered Cramer and the network for being subservient to Wall Street and not alerting viewers to the coming meltdown. Cramer and the network can defend themselves, but what became clear to me is that Stewart really doesn't believe in the idea of a stock market where individuals can go to invest their money and build wealth over the long term. This, I think, is a revealing quote:

Isn't that part of the problem, selling this idea that you don't have to do anything? Anytime you sell people the idea that, sit back and you'll get 10 to 20 percent on your money, don't you always know that that's going to be a lie. When are we going to realize in this country that are wealth is work, that we're workers.

Me: So what is Stewart suggesting, that we "workers" just save insane gobs of money that we squirrel away into low-yielding savings accounts and rely on those savings and Social Security for our retirement?

No Jim. He doesn't. You thick headed fool.

Let me explain this to you slowly and carefully.

He's expecting not to be lied to by guys like Bernie Madoff and Sir Allen Stanford. He's expecting that the people monitoring the activity of guys like Madoff and Stanford -- and Jim Cramer for that matter -- actually monitor them and provide critical government oversight, and not end up empowering them, enabling them, and ignoring them long enough so that they implode in multi billion dollar scandals with our f'ckin money, you ass.

He's expecting that the financial companies that take our assets don't end up betting them on multi-trillion dollar securitized mortgage shit that not even they understand after the lessons of "You don't get something for nothing" in the dot com bubble became painfully clear. He's expecting the government to defend our financial system from such wretched, unsustainable excess that it has literally imperiled the entire globe.

In short, he's expecting the people in charge to act like adults, instead of the world's biggest collection of greedy jagoffs who all happily took our retirement money and played Deal or No Deal with it to the tune of trillions.

Finally, he expects people like Cramer, and Madoff, and Stanford, and you there, Jim, to realize that the greed, lack of regulation, and complete failure of the system needs to never, ever happen again, and for people to stop defending this indefensible garbage and help the rest of us find a real solution instead of demagogic whining about savings accounts in a blatant attempt to take Stewart out of context and accuse him of your own crime of missing the point.

And while we're on the subject of saving, maybe if Americans actually lived within their means and hadn't created such monstrous, unsustainable debt in the first place, we wouldn't be hurt nearly as much by this crash as we are hurting now.

Everyone bought into Something For Nothing, and in the end, we got a whole hell of a lot of nothing for our troubles. That's a hell of a thing to base your entire financial plans on...and yes, I know your next shrill strike will be about Obama's spending. We've got no choice but to hope it works right now, Jimbo.

Because if it doesn't, America is done.

He follows up his question with this:

The only reason to do that is if you don't believe in the long-run soundness of the American economy. And if the American economy isn't dynamic over the long run, don't expect Social Security or Medicare to meet their meager promises.

No Jim, I do not believe in the long-run soundness of the American economy, if you haven't noticed.

Neither should you. We're in real trouble here. Try to be part of the solution.