Shares of Netflix (NFLX) started Tuesday on a high note, with the shares gaining more than 1% out of the gate. Traders appear to be responding to new comments from Jim Cramer, after the host of CNBC's Mad Money offered an upbeat opinion on the stock Monday.

Specifically, Cramer is enthusiastic about Netflix's push into streaming content, and he has high expectations for future subscriber growth. The analyst also argued that the stock's valuation is actually quite reasonable, when measured against the company's long-term growth rate. For traders looking to take part in continued gains by NFLX, Cramer suggested in-the-money call options.

Despite a lackluster day for the broader equities market, MGM Resorts International (MGM) has racked up a healthy gain of about 4% so far. Scanning the headlines, it seems that traders are responding to a bullish endorsement for the gaming guru from CNBC analyst Jim Cramer.

"Las Vegas is coming back," declared Jim Cramer on Friday's episode of Mad Money. He went on to add, "MGM's the best way to speculate on the turn, especially considering that they helped get Senate majority leader Harry Reid re-elected."

Warren Buffett is widely regarded as the most successful investor of our times. On Monday Becky Quick of CNBC asked him today to reveal the dumbest investment he ever made. Turns out, Buffett says that his own company, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), was the dumbest stock he has ever bought.

Why? Buffett explained on CNBC that early in 1962, he came across the textile company, which was constantly closing mills and reinvesting the proceeds in its stock. So Buffett figured he would also buy the stock, tender it to Berkshire's management and make a small profit.

Shares of MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR) turned higher right out of the gate Thursday morning, surging roughly 4% with the sound of the opening bell. For the catalyst behind this bullish gap, we need look no further than peripatetic CNBC analyst Jim Cramer.

On Wednesday, the Mad Money host cited MEMC as his top pick within the solar sector. To back up his bullish opinion, Cramer cited three key factors: the recent $380 million sale of subsidiary SunEdison's Italian property, lowball earnings estimates from analysts, and heavy insider buying by company execs in recent months.

Luxury jewelry store chain Tiffany & Co. (TIF) is trading lower today as Wall Street awaits its fourth quarter earnings report on Monday, but by most accounts analysts are expecting to see strong earnings from the company.

Going into Monday's earnings report, analysts are forecasting the company to report $1.13 a share. For the same period last year Tiffany had earnings of $0.85 per share, so if it is able to match analyst estimates it would mark a very respectable 32% jump year over year.

Here's some media news for CNBC watchers: The New York Post reports:

CNBC's low-rated 10 p.m. show -- hosted by Carmen Wong Ulrich, the personal-finance expert and author of "Generation Debt" -- is said to be a victim of the success of documentaries like "Pleasure: Business of Porn" and "The Age of Wal-Mart." A spokesman for CNBC told Page Six, "Due to the tremendous success of our documentary program, we've made the tough decision to move resources to our long-form [docu-making] unit."

Right: It's being pulled from the air because CNBC thinks it can get better ratings with other shows. Isn't that always the reason shows get canceled?

Will financial reporting ever have a Woodward and Bernstein, the two metro desk Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate Scandal? After attending last night's panel on Financial Journalism Under Fire: Did We Do Our Job?, hosted by the New York Financial Writers Association, the answer is clear: no. (Changes may and should happen, and I'll touch on a few of those).

I have a theory that if you took a psychological assessment of a sports writer, a political reporter, and a financial writer to see who was the most cynical, the answer would most definitely be the financial writer. They're reporting on an industry ruled by greed and people who make more money in a year than they'll see in a lifetime. The system is just too large, too shady, and too encouraged to be bad in the name of profits (deregulated) that reporting on any of this would be best reserved for some hippie outlet like Mother Jones, not the respectable Wall Street Journal. Big scoops in finance usually involve mergers and acquisitions, company and exec failures -- going after anything else is cute idealism. (In fact, someone last night compared it to steroids and baseball -- you don't want to know where those home runs are coming from, you just want to enjoy the game).

Jon Stewart has devoted a considerable amount of airtime to bashing CNBC and its pundits for not doing more to warn the public about the stupidity and incompetence that led to disasters for retirement portfolios.

Now NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker is firing back, calling Stewart's attacks "incredibly unfair" and "completely out of line." He said that "everyone wants to find a scapegoat" and believes that blaming the financial media for the meltdown is "absurd."

Rick Santelli's passionate rant against Obama's stimulus plan attracted millions of YouTube views and a rebuke from the White House press secretary. Overnight, Santelli was transformed from an obscure commodities commentator into an icon.

Playboy claimed that there was more to the apotheosis of Santelli than met the eye. The URL to the Playboy commentary no longer works but it's reprinted here. Mark Ames and Yasha Levine claim that "As veteran Russia reporters, both of us spent years watching the Kremlin use fake grassroots movements to influence and control the political landscape. To us, the uncanny speed and direction the movement took and the players involved in promoting it had a strangely forced quality to it. If it seemed scripted, that's because it was."

In a discussion with Rick Santelli on Fast Money, CNBC's Dylan Ratigan argued that one of the major factors stifling a restoration of market confidence has been the failure to crack down on the bad actors -- the charlatans, crooks, and incompetents who drove corporate America into this ditch.

Ratigan makes a pretty bold comparison: He argues that the people who are saying that we need to "move forward" with a recovery are like people who said that we should "move on" after September 11, and not bother with going after Osama Bin Laden.

Rick Santelli's impassioned diatribe against Obama's plan to help struggling homeowners sparked a prickly and sarcastic response from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Santelli fired back in a CNBC interview with Larry Kudlow (see below). In a statement on the CNBC website, Santelli wrote that "The issues that currently face us and the solutions to correct them need to be debated, vetted, and openly studied. This should not be an issue about the political left or right."

Kudlow, a die-hard right-winger, is trying to make this little cat fight between Santelli and Gibbs into a free speech/government bullying critics issue. I don't buy that. In any case, this makes for great theater, and it's good to see people debating important economic issues.

Back in August of 2007, Barron's Bill Alpert slammed Jim Cramer's stock-picking abilities in a cover story (subscription required). At the time, Alpert reported that "Over the past two years, viewers holding Cramer's stocks would be up 12% while the Dow rose 22% and the S&P 500 16%, according to a record of 1,300 of the CNBC star's Buy recommendations compiled by YourMoneyWatch.com, a Website run by a retired stock analyst and loyal Cramer-watcher."

Now Alpert is back for more. In the latest issue of Barron's, he writes (subscription required) that "Cramer's recommendations underperform the market by most measures. From May to December of last year, for example, the market lost about 30%. Heeding Cramer's Buys and Sells would have added another five percentage points to that loss, according to our latest tally."

There have been numerous stories about the plight of the newly unemployed former Wall Street hotshot and it really is quite sad. Hard-working paper pushers have gone from seven-figure bonuses to the unemployment office. and in particularly dire cases, they've had to transfer kids to less elite private schools or perhaps even sell an Aspen ski lodge.

All of this could make for a fascinating CNBC reality show styled after hits like The Surreal Life and The Simple Life. Call it The Severed Life. The show would feature recently laid-off high level corporate executives, including former CEOs who left with massive severance packages, there to serve as punching bags: Richard Fuld, Angelo Mozilo, and Ken Lewis -- Oh wait, he somehow still has a job. Lesser-known cast members might include investment bankers and hedge fund managers.