Friday, March 13, 2009

Fucking Up Pays

By now everyone's prolly seen the footage of Jon Stewart tearing into Jim Cramer. And while I've laid into him too, it's not hard to KINDA feel bad for the dude. He doesn't SEEM like a complete douchebag, but the very nature of what he gets paid a lot of money to do can pretty much only end with this result. On one hand, you hafta wonder what kind of person who was smart enough to accrue such an amount of money that he is able to invest in the market would turn on a tv show wherein some guy is in rolled-up sleeves, screaming at the camera, and decide "hmmm..I should probably trust my life savings to this guy." On the other hand, how on Earth does such a show exist in the first place?

A few years ago I was reading an article over at Sports Illustrated by Dr. Z. In the beginning of the article, he was laughing at himself for how poorly he had done the previous year of, after much analyzing and years of study on the subject, forecasting how each team would do that year in the NFL. He was wrong about most everything, he pointed out. Then he went on in the article to make....the next year's picks. About halfway through I'm like, if this guy was so wrong last year, why the fuck am I reading his picks for this year? Then I did a little research, and it's turns out he's ALWAYS pretty much wrong all the time.

Of course, that's just football picks. A game. But it seems like sports forecasters, weathermen, CEOs and financial "experts" pretty much can be wrong 100% of the time, and still not only keep their jobs, but make tons of money at them. This is a luxury the average working American does not have. I can probably leave Short Bus behind at the White Castle by himself 2 or 3 times before his parents decide "it might be time for a change." Hell, I'll prolly be fired for imagining it here.

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