Although most people are saying Jon Stewart got the best of the encounter, others seem to think that Cramer isn’t all that bad.

This is purest poppycock. Jim Cramer had no influence over the twin manias that afflicted America in the last ten years: the madness of homebuyers for ever more expensive houses, and the madness of bankers for buying bonds based on those homes. Jim Cramer did not persuade the Asian savers to pour moronic amounts of capital into oversaturated American markets. He did not talk up MBS or CDOs to any level that could be vaguely said to have meaningfully increased the amount of leverage in the system. If you want a television host, or network, to blame all of our troubles on, you’d do better to cast your ire on Home and Garden Television, and Flip This House. They’re the ones who told Americans, over and over and over and over, that it was possible to get rich by installing granite countertops.

It’s an easy opinion to understand. One thing that Jim Cramer said that I have to agree with. When the Chairman of Lehman Brothers comes on your show and lies to you, it’s not completely your fault for believing him.

That said, it will be very interesting to see the tenor of financial reporting in the coming years. I assume it will be tempered with a lot more tamped-down rhetoric that it has in the past.