Of course, "then the company imploded and thousands of ordinary people saw their retirement savings vanish. Oops." Nick continues:

Now Cramer is telling his viewers the Employee Free Choice Act will hurt the U.S. economy.

Cramer was wrong then, he's wrong now! But this time we know exactly what will happen if viewers listen: Millions will lose out financially.

Jim Cramer is claiming that the Employee Free Choice Act will stall the U.S. economy, even though numerous economists (including Nobel Prize winners!) and institutional investors who manage $757 billion in assets recognize that the bill is critical to rebuilding the broken economy.

Discussing on Joe Scarborough's MSNBC show the act he calls "a 'sword of Damocles' hanging over our economy," Cramer "and other guests claimed they couldn't identify a single successful unionized company."

But American Rights at Work happens to know that "GE owns both MSNBC and Jim Cramer's own employer, CNBC. And guess what? GE’s employees are represented by unions"--and General Electric "earned more than $18 billion in profits in 2008!"

Take action by letting CNBC know that "Jim Cramer needs to stop parroting the talking points of the same greedy CEOs who got us into this economic crisis."

Also read the FAIR magazine Extra!: "For Media, 'Card Check' Promise Is One to Break: Corporate Outlets Suddenly Discover 'Workers Rights'" (February 2009) by Janine Jackson.

Cramer claimed that Americans aren't buying into healthcare reform right now because "it just means tax increases, and there's got to be someone who pays for it." According to Cramer, the solution that "everybody" wants is for Obama to "go away": "But until we get the economy moving again, I think everybody wishes that Obama would just kind of go away for a little bit."

If Cramer looked closer at the poll, it also shows that 57 percent of the American public approve of what Obama is doing on the economy overall. Of course, Cramer is someone who claimed that Obama's policies have resulted in “the most, greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a president” and is known for his irresponsible financial cheerleading (e.g., “Bear Stearns is not in trouble“).

Terkel has to wonder if, in actuality, "maybe it's not Obama who Americans want to 'just kind of go away for a little bit.'”

Mike Barnicle, Boston Herald: "Paul Krugman wants anyone who makes over $75,000 a year in jail."

--MSNBC's Morning Joe (4/2/09), cited in Huffington Post (4/2/09)

This needs to be repeated every time someone pleads, "Who could have known?" Plenty of people did see the disaster coming. Most of them were marginalized, however, laboring at out-of-the-way econ departments, blogs and B-list think tanks. They were excluded and even ridiculed because their larger understanding of the economy was not one that fit well with the sort of Wall Street worship preached by the likes of CNBC....

The reasons the financial-entertainment biz failed us are many and complex, but they ultimately come down to this: In the marketplace to describe the marketplace itself, there is precious little competition. There is a single, standard product that comes in packaging that is alternately sultry, energetic or fun--bitter, brainy or Cramer "crazy"--but which rarely strays beyond certain ideological boundaries.

At such outlets, "Adversarial voices are few. Criticism is sacrificed for access. Advice sometimes shades over into simple propaganda." For some analysis of the current flavor of just such propaganda, listen to the new edition of FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Melissa Harris-Lacewell on Earmarks" (3/13/09).