UPDATED VERSION:

Jon Stewart is incredibly funny.  I watch his show whenever I can, but like many citizens of this country he really doesn’t understand how our financial system works.    He thoroughly trashed Rick Santelli and CNBC on his program last night.   The CNBC trashing may be well deserved, but the Santelli trashing is totally misleading.  Let me elaborate:

This country is only powerful because of its capitalist system.  Everything we have in this country is due to the entrepreneurs and innovators who created incredible products through the companies they founded.  Whether it was the light bulb, the car, or the M1 Abrams tank these are the foundations of our country.  Our system is great because it allows people to be innovative and entrepreneurial without the government getting in their way (too much).  Take away the great innovators and entrepreneurs in this country and we are nothing.  We would not be the greatest economic power nor the greatest military power.  Wall Street is the fictitious place where those innovators reside.  Their companies, their products and their employees are all ingrained in the fabric of this place known as Wall Street.  What Stewart doesn’t understand is that Wall Street is America.  THE COMPANIES AND THEIR EMPLOYEES (such as Viacom who employs Mr. Stewart) ARE AMERICA.  Stewart acts as if Wall Street and Main Street are two different streets when they are one in the same.

Jon Stewart went off on Santelli for his rant in which he called foreclosed homeowners “losers”.   Are they “losers”?  No.  Of course not and Santelli was sorry for his terminology at the time.  But did they make bad decisions?  Yes.  Did corporations also make bad decisions?  Yes.  So why are we helping the banks and not the homeowners?  Well, because in this Capitalist Darwinist system that has served us so well the corporations are the backbone.  The employees are expendable.  The corporations themselves are not expendable.  It is what it is.   It is a sad reality, but this is not a socialist country.  It did not become great serving EVERYONE’S needs.   It became great by catering to the needs of entrepreneurs, innovators and their corporations.

Stewart has a very negative view on the banks and bankers because he thinks they are just out selling useless products that make themselves wealthy without providing a real service.   Yes, many bankers are scum, but by providing capital to homeowners and corporations they serve as a vital cog in the machine.  A cog, if removed, creates systemic risk.  Banks are the arteries in the capitalist system.  Let them die and the whole system dies.   The banks are so intertwined in the corporations of this country that their failure threatens the entire system.  Had Bear Stearns failed it’s likely that JP Morgan would have failed.  And then you woud get situations where companies all over the country have trouble refinancing their debt because their bank just filed for bankruptcy, they no longer pay their employees, they stop funding operations and they too file bankruptcy.  The domino effect would have been catastrophic. If anything has been learned from this crisis it is that we are too dependent on a select few banks.  The banks became too big, too powerful and too intertwined.  Catering to their needs at this time, unfortunately, is a necessary evil.

I just have to wonder how Mr. Stewart would feel if Viacom were going under right now and he and his co-workers were at risk of losing their jobs.  Would he be willing to bailout Viacom if that were the case? Would he just want a bunch of them to get checks as their company goes under?  Or is he willing to just let the company die and see his job go away with it?

This is the system we chose.  It is the system that made this country great.  Yes, it’s cutthroat at times and isn’t always fair to the little guy, but hey, if you don’t like that there is a beautiful place called Paris where all of your dreams will come true.