Jim Cramer: Obama, Panic

Jim Cramer of CNBC was on the Meet the Press yesterday discussing the debt ceiling situation.

In terms of leadership, Cramer declares that Obama handled the matter very poorly, saying that Obama caused panic.

Video.



Transcript

DAVID GREGORY: Let, let me ask Jim Cramer about the president's leadership in all of this. To show you how toxic this atmosphere is here, Peggy Noonan wrote in her piece in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend the following about the president has supporters still, but there is grim support. She writes, "Obama is losing a battle in which he had superior forces - the presidency, the U.S. Senate. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him much too much mystique. He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser." Pretty strong language. From your vantage point, how has the president led through this?

JIM CRAMER: All right. One of the things that happened, I want to talk about what the congressman said about the media, that the media exacerbated or even caused the problem. We were all hopeful in Wall Street and in Main Street that the president would come out and say a few things which said compromise. He came out and panicked the heck out of us. He talked about the higher interest rates for mortgages, he talked the spike--the spiking credit card, he talked about how hard it is going to be to get a student loan. It took us all aback because we felt that he'd be a compromise leader. Instead, he created tremendous fear. Tremendous fear means uncertainty. Uncertainty means no spending. Uncertainty means no spending by businesses. It means no hiring. It was a setback.

GREGORY: But...

CRAMER: He caused the panic, not the media.

I agree.

Obama caused the panic.

He says what he believes to be in his best interests politically. He puts himself first, not the country.

In short, Obama is not a good leader. He's too selfish.