After a brief hiatus, John Oliver returned to Last Week Tonight on Sunday where he immediately got to work tearing into Mad Money host Jim Cramer for misleading his audience about the threat of inflation. In fairness, Cramer wasn’t the only economist who thought the Federal Reserve wouldn’t raise interest rates, but he was definitely one of the loudest, and Oliver roasted him for the supremely bad take.
“Here is Jim Cramer, the answer to the question, what if a garbage can full of cocaine and business school pamphlets,” Oliver said before playing a clip of the Mad Money host arguing that the inflation issue would go away on its own. Via Yahoo:
Oliver then played a clip of Cramer saying, “The bottom line, I don’t think Powell (Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell) needs to slam the brakes on the economy, despite what you hear from the inflationistas in the media, the weight of the evidence is finally going Powell’s way. Team transitory is going to win. I say stop freaking about inflation.”
“Okay, setting aside the fact that he’s speaking with an intensity level there, best described as Patti Lupone admonishing a rude audience member,” Oliver said in response, “it’s pretty clear that this clip, much like Jim Cramer himself, has not aged very well.”
Oliver then twisted the knife just a bit more by playing a clip of Cramer from six months later where he’s doing a “full 180 with a very different tone” by personally urging the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to “break this thing now.”
“That was a pretty dramatic turnaround,” Oliver quipped. “He went from loudly unconcerned about rising prices to full-blown inflationista in a matter of months.”
(Via Yahoo!)