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Commentary - March 24, 2007 - Printable Version
- Living in Cramerica
by Mark Faulk
(Editor's note: All Mad Money sound effects in this article are for entertainment purposes only, and not in any way a recommendation to do bodily harm to Jim Cramer. He'll get his in the end.) Jim Cramer, sole ruler and psycho-king of Cramerica, is losing his (King) Midas touch. For the past two years, he has been ranting like a crack-crazed king on CNBC's Mad Money, a caricature so grotesque and absurd that, like a gruesome car wreck, America couldn't help but stop and stare. (Cue Mad Money sound effect of a car wrecking.) Cramer is enough of an attention-starved sociopath that he mistook the freakshow curiousity element for real affection. Just as he can�t seem to discern the difference between right and wrong, or truth and lies, he seems to think that any attention is good attention.
Sometimes I feel sorry for him, other times I want to (as I've said a million times on my radio show), see him hauled off ranting and raving in handcuffs, screaming "booyah!!" as the lights go off on the set of Mad Money, (Okay, like Jim Cramer on the Imus in the Morning Show the other day, I lied. I never for a moment felt sorry for him.)
What's really interesting about all the recent furor over Cramer's admission that he is either a crook or a liar (or both), is why the same people and publications who came to his defense when he thumbed his nose at the SEC by writing "BULL!!!" in giant letters across a SEC-issued subpoena are suddenly throwing his bald head under the bus. Anyone who reads faulkingtruth.com, investigatethesec.com, or thesanitycheck.com knows that all three of those publications have been exposing Cramer for the lowlife crook that he is for months, if not years.
So why now? Did every mainstream newspaper in America suddenly wake up one day and collectively think to themselves "Hey, maybe those guys are right, maybe this Cramer character isn't the Mother Teresa of stock picking that we've been portraying him as�" Or, as is usually the case, are they just following orders and assassinating a foot soldier who marched just a little too far outside the ranks?
(Cue Mad Money sound effect of a firing squad.)
Why have Cramer's comments on the YouTube.com clip of an interview he did on TheStreet.com over three months suddenly come back to haunt him, especially since he�s been saying essentially the same thing in one way or another for years? And why does CNBC suddenly appear to be driving the bus that every reporter in America is throwing him under?
(Cue Mad Money sound effect of truck beeping as it backs up�over Jim Cramer�s writhing body.)
Seriously, this is the network that in the space of two years has transformed itself from a seemingly respected financial network into the Pimp My Stock Network. They backed him when he defaced a subpoena from the regulatory branch that oversees the financial markets, and in fact milked it for every ratings point they could squeeze out of it. They didn't even blink when he had this to say on their own network several weeks ago:
"I just want to put people in the heads of hedge fund managers for a second. When I was short, in other words when I had lots of money bet against the market, it was really imperative to come in. Not in groups because you don't want to foment a bear because that's a violation of the �34 act, but you want to be able to come in at a particular moment and hit every single index hard in order to crack it."
In the next breath he explained how it is done, remember, this was on CNBC, not the YouTube.com video that has caused all the uproar of the past few days:
"When you're a bear you try to knock everything down, you try to panic people, you pick up the phone and you say that 'blah, blah, blah, Star is going out of business this weekend and blah, blah, blah Mac is filing bankruptcy.' It's very easy to spread those rumors. Is it illegal? When your firm is on the line you tend to do questionable things."
(Cue Mad Money tape of Cramer yelling "Don't buy! Don't Buy!", his line from his cameo in the TV series "Arrested Development".)
Incredibly, the current concern at CNBC over Cramer's remarks isn't even because he said, after describing in TheStreet.com interview how he would "commit $5 million in capital" and drive down the price of a stock, that manipulating stocks is "a fun game, and it's a lucrative game." Cramer's job isn't at risk because he encouraged "anyone who's in a hedge fund to do it" as a "very quick way to make money, and very satisfying," nor is it because he referred to the retail investors as "moron longs" and said that "you can't create yourself an impression that a stock's down, but you do it anyway because the SEC doesn't understand it."
Maybe it was because Cramer described in detail how he personally would manipulate stocks when he ran his own hedge fund:
"What I used to do was called, if I wanted it to go higher I would take and bid, take and bid, take and bid, and if I wanted it to go lower, I'd hit an offer, hit an offer, hit an offer, and I could get a stock like RIMM that might cost me a fifteen or twenty million ante to knock RIMM down, but it would be fabulous because it would beleaguer all the moron longs who were all so keen on Research in Motion."
(Note to Research in Motion: Meet with attorneys about suing Jim Cramer, TheStreet.com, and Cramer Berkowitz hedge fund first thing next week.)
No, the reason Cramer's head is on the chopping block at CNBC is because he insulted CNBC reporter Bob Pisani by saying he would "contact the Pisani's of the world" and then "talk to the morons at the Wall Street Journal" and get them to trash Research in Motion.
(Cue Mad Money sound effect of guillotine blade falling on Cramer's neck.)
On the "Imus in the Morning" show on Thursday, March 22, Cramer said that he was lying when he said he broke the law, presumably because lying doesn't carry a prison sentence.
"Yeah, you know I think I gotta take a page from you. I gotta either shut up, or get better at telling what I did, or didn't do, and I did not do a good job in distinguishing the two in that interview. I would point out that what I was saying was "Look, I gotta show you the scams that other people are doing, I gotta show you the way Wall Street really works. It's what I've been doing. It's nothing new from "Confessions of a Street Addict", my first book, but I didn't say it right, I gotta get better at saying it. I did not do the stuff, but I didn't say it right."
But the real question remains: Why now? The obvious answer is that Cramer has suddenly become too much of a loose cannon, exposing secrets that were supposed to remain within the Circle of Greed. The Faulking Truth has been writing about the connection between the major financial media outlets for well over a year, and put it this way when the same people who are burying Cramer now were praising him a year ago when he was laughing in the face of the SEC while defacing his subpoena:
"Dow Jones owns MarketWatch, Dow Jones owns Barron's, Dow Jones even owns The Wall Street Journal. And that isn't all. Dow Jones also owns Factiva, a web-based business venture, in a "joint venture" with Reuters. And, Dow Jones owns half of CNBC Asia and CNBC Europe in a joint venture with NBC. And just for fun, they also own Smart Money Magazine in a joint venture with the Hearst Corporation. Throw in the Greenberg and Cramer ties to TheStreet.com and you've pretty much covered your bases.
So, in summary: Dow Jones either owns or is connected to MarketWatch, Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, Reuter's, NBC, CNBC, Smart Money Magazine, and its reporters have strong ties to TheStreet.com. Oh yeah, they also own 34 weekly or daily newspapers scattered across the U.S."
Therein lies the key to the Cramer's execution by the financial press. As always, the ganging up effect is no more a coincidence than the blatant manipulation of our financial markets. Throw in the fact that FOX news is launching their own business channel that will be in direct competition to CNBC, and you have all kinds of potential reasons for the precipitous fall of Cramerica. Whatever the reason, this entire fiasco appears to be a bit too orchestrated, a little too cut and dried. This reporter won�t be sorry to see Cramer shot down from his pedestal at CNBC, but it's clear that he�s nothing more than the court jester in this kingdom.
As satisfying as it was to watch him writhe in nervousness on the Imus Show, knowing that while he might indeed believe he is above the spineless SEC, but that he was merely a pawn in the overall scheme to squeeze every penny out of America, it's more important than ever to focus on the big picture. As for Jim Cramer, maybe we'll get to see him hauled off in handcuffs on national TV after all. We can only hope.
And that, as always, is the Faulking Truth.
(Cue Mad Money sound effect of Jim Cramer's career being flushed down the toilet.)
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