I really don't think it could have been prevented by good journalism. I see the government basically guaranteeing bank losses without adequate collateral. The

I really don't think it could have been prevented by good journalism. I see the government basically guaranteeing bank losses without adequate collateral. The government did not really know how the banks assets should be valued, but they were willing to accept the bank's word. So basically the banks had a financial incentive to make extremely risky investments. But still, Cramer and other journalists failed. By the time Cramer said that AIG was safe, I thought it should have been obvious that the banks had invested a lot of money in some extremely risky assets. In June that year Bear Stearns said it was spending over 3 billion to bail out one of its funds. So instead of Cramer deciding that he did not have enough enough information to evaluate AIG, and saying that, he basically decided that he had enough info to say that AIG was safe. That probably convinced a lot of people to keep their money in AIG stock.