This explains why I've said in the past, that Stewart is the best financial journalist on the box. Maybe Brother Larry helped with this Jim Cramer ambush.

You can see Larry being interviewed in this clip from 60 minutes:

---

From the WSJ



Yesterday’s brief market crash is perfect fodder for the “Daily Show. ”

You can already picture the video montage: Talking heads going bonkers as the Dow drops nearly 1,000 points. Faux-video of retirees sobbing in the streets, as their nest eggs vaporize. Then the implacable Stewart, sarcastically skewering the people who are supposed to keep the financial system running smoothly.

“Hey honey, did you know that Jon Stewart’s brother is a big shot Wall Street executive?”

Of course one of those people happens to be Stewart’s own brother, a person at the very heart of the mysterious “Flash Crash” that shook markets Thursday.

Stewart’s older brother, Larry Leibowitz, is the chief operating officer at the New York Stock Exchange and an expert in electronic-trading systems.

NYSE officials have been taking heat today because of their decision to slow down trading in exceptionally volatile stocks on Thursday afternoon.

Critics say the NYSE’s circuit breakers may have exacerbated the panic because they sent the signal to an already jumpy market that there were problems with the stocks. NYSE CEO Duncan Niederauer said this morning in a CNBC interview that slowing down the process and moving certain trades to a human auction helped stem the selloff.

If we were in Stewart’s shoes, we’d ask big brother some of those trademark, Daily Show “Let me get this straight” questions:

“In today’s modern era of super computers, how is it that one lone trader punching in the wrong numbers could threaten to bring down the entire system?”

Or how about: “Is it really a good idea to have machines trading so furiously that at some point they get out of control?”

We left a message with the Daily Show to see if an interview between the brothers is in the offing. A spokesman emailed back and declined to comment. It seems unlikely, though. There’s no mention of Leibowitz on the Daily Show website’s list of upcoming guests.

When a Reuters reporter asked Leibowitz in March whether he ever considered going on his brother’s show: “I probably wouldn’t make a very good guest,” he said. “I have tried to fly under the radar.”

Not today, he won’t.

---

Funny clip: