CNBC host Jim Cramer just can’t stop saying dumb things. The Mad Money personality is now claiming the recent banking fiasco in the past week means brighter days are ahead for the Federal Reserve in its fight against inflation.
Cramer apparently hasn’t learned from the mockery he received for his horrific February call that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was a buy at $320 a share before the stock collapsed a month later.
During the March 14 edition of his CNBC show, Cramer fawned about how he had been a big “supporter of Jay Powell, our Fed Chief” — the same person who tried to hoodwink Americans for months into believing that the inflation crisis his institution’s policies helped instigate was transitory. “I have been with him the whole way in his quest to beat back inflation because that’s how you destroy the power of the savings of the working person,” Cramer proclaimed.
Then came Cramer’s hot take, and it was a doozy: “Until last week’s banking fiasco, I think Jay Powell was losing the war against inflation. Losing it!” Cramer slammed his signature buzzer for emphasis. “But the collapse of some highly visible banks, the fallout that could cause the folding of a great number of startups and” the general uneasiness in the economy meant the Fed plane “is on the cusp of a soft, safe landing.” [Emphasis added.]
Huh?
Cramer even went as far as to say the banking chaos meant the Fed shouldn’t be as aggressive in its planned rate hikes, calling for the institution to “take pause.” Bloomberg News published a story hours earlier based on new inflation data showing a 6 percent year-over-year consumer price spike headlined: “Fed Rate Pause Is a Tough Call After Inflation Reaccelerates.” The new data, said Bloomberg, “suggests that the Fed doesn’t have luxury to delay hike.”
Cramer is shameless. He's doubling down on stupid instead of talking about the inflation-driven corner into which the FED has now backed themselves.
— Rich Baris "The People's Pundit" (@Peoples_Pundit) March 15, 2023
Fight inflation OR potentially risk more bank failures.
People like him and most others from Wall Street to D.C. really thought… https://t.co/VGJZL0G6r3
NPR also reported just hours before Cramer’s latest display of nonsense that the banking collapses coupled with new inflation data meant the “Federal Reserve's fight against inflation just got harder.”
Does that sound like a winning situation?
As NPR summarized, “prices are still climbing at a rapid rate.” Investor Carl Icahn was just on Cramer’s network earlier on March 14 warning how stubbornly-high inflation and poor corporate leadership meant that “[t]he system is breaking down, and we absolutely have a major problem in our economy today.’”
It’s unclear why anyone would take Cramer seriously at this point.
This is just the latest instance in a matter of days where Cramer has made a fool of himself. During the fallout from the SVB collapse, Cramer tweeted March 10 that “[First Republic Bank (FRC)] is new focus... very good bank.” However — just three days after Cramer’s tweet — FRC’s stock plunged 65 percent during premarket trading on Monday morning after declining 33 percent the prior week, according to CNBC. With Cramer’s new, celebratory view of the Fed's odds in the fight against the inflation it helped create, it’s as if he’s trying to make Opposite Day a reality. As YouTube personality Ian Miles Cheong tweeted in response to Cramer’s take, “That’s it. The economy is over.”
That’s it. The economy is over. https://t.co/boHAOBK4Qe
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 15, 2023
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board directly linked the SVB collapse to the Fed’s easy money policies. In a world of “near zero interest rates,” The Journal said, “SVB put the money in long duration fixed-income assets in search of a higher return.” Those Treasury “bonds and mortgage-backed securities” were generally considered to be “nearly risk-free for the purpose of measuring bank capital.” However, according to The Journal, “those securities declined in value as the Fed took interest rates up quickly to break the inflation it helped to cause.”
Since 2008, the Federal Funds Rate has been below inflation 84% of the time. This is Fed created insanity that some, like SVB, thought would continue. We’ve been telling people since it started, that it couldn’t last. It hasn’t.
— Brian Wesbury (@wesbury) March 11, 2023
Conservatives are under attack. Contact CNBC at cnbcnewspr@nbcuni.com and demand it distance itself from Cramer’s wild inflation hot takes.
