I wonder how much of this Huffington Post piece Jon Stewart is going to use. Jim Cramer Shorting Stocks, Manipulating Markets, Saying The SEC Doesn't Understand.
"In light of the current economic crisis, and with the hullabaloo ignited recently by Jon Stewart over the accuracy of CNBC's reporting, we thought it might be useful to revisit this shocking 2006 interview Jim Cramer gave to TheStreet.com's Aaron Task. In it, the host of Mad Money says he regularly manipulated the market when he ran his hedge fund. He calls it "a fun game, and it's a lucrative game." He suggests all hedge fund managers do the same. "No one else in the world would ever admit that, but I could care. I am not going to say it on TV," he quips in the video."
Hello? SEC?
4 comments:
Jim Cramer is one of the few people willing to pull back the curtain and expose the financial wizards for what they are....manipulators. This interview is simply Cramer being truthful about what goes on on "Wall Street". Don't be so quick to kill the messenger while he is letting everyone in on the ugly secrets of the financial biz.
Who else is going to tell you what's behind the curtain.
Anon is right. Cramer is a loud mouth but fundamentally he says what he thinks. He was certainly wrong leading up to the stock market crash but then so was almost everyone.
The SEC always seems to be a step behind whatever the latest wall street scam for manipulating the market. In the 90s it was companies manipulating their quarters so that profits/revenue would slightly exceed analyst expectations. When that was discouraged (by making executives personally liable) many companies simply stopped giving analyst guidance. I'm not sure that's better.
I've never watched his show so I will defer to others. In whatever interview this was, he does say he wouldn't say this stuff on television so I'm not sure what that implies.
Any investigatory agency is going to be behind the criminals, that's how it works. First a crime has to be committed before it can be caught. But also, any new scheme is by definition new. Same with anti-virus software, the viruses must be known before they can be found.
I agree on the guidance issue, though I do not understand SEC regulations or market speak well enough to know if what Cramer is describing is illegal. I'm not sure drug dealers consulting about their field for a film or writing a book would exonerate any crimes because they're "talkign about how it really works"
Stewart's original point (before it became a person war with Cramer) was how could every financial reporter be wrong. Doesn't that describe a field that is broken? I agree with that. Cramer said on the Today show that when he told people to sell every on Dec 6 that was something someone in his field isn't supposed to do. I can see the rational of not wanting to cause a panic, but there is the other side of feeding into the bubble which didn't seem to be a problem for them.
This is classic misdirection on the part of the media and others and I'm not sure why it is taking place.
For some reason, "they" want us to talk about how the media is "broken", or the how the SEC is "broken", or anything else but, the criminal and/or immoral activities of the finanacial masters of the universe, who for their own financial gain over the last 5 years created a financial house of cards (e.g., MBS and CDS based on crap mortgages), that they knew full well was prone to collapse at almost any time. As long as the party kept going, they were all taking hoome major bonuses based on these fraudulent financial instruments.
Clearly the people in charge at various financial institutions either actually broke the law, or bent it so far as to be prosecutable at the very least.
For some reason, the media is happy to focus on other things like Jim Cramer, or the SEC (yes, they have been asleep at the wheel for many years) or yes, let's all focus on an obvious criminal like Madoff. I still find it incredulous that financial executives have not been charged with a single crime related to their activities, statements (lies), and other misrepresentations which have occurred over the past two years (and maybe longer).
For whatever reason, the media has decided not to call out the perpetrators of this financial meltdown (i.e., the Executives of the Wall Street firms and Major Banks, Bond Ratings Services - whose AAA ratings on junk mortgage related securities were demanded by, bought by, and paid for by the Wall St. firms, etc...) but rather to blame semi-truthful witnesses like Jim Cramer, or to blame the inept police (i.e., the SEC). It seems the strategy is to blame everyone else for the crime except the criminal....and it's working!
It is also puzzling to me that State Pension funds have not directed their States' Attorneys General to investigate possible crimes related to the meltdown. These pension funds have lost hundreds or billions (maybe over a trillion) of dollars because of the meltdown. The ironic thing in all of this, is that the only high profile legal action, that I am aware of, is a civil suit being brought by Hank Greenburg, the former chairman of AIG, who has lost a personal forture because of the collapse of AIG. He has brought the suit against the current management of AIG for lying about the financial condition of the company.
I am not typically a conspiracy theory type of person, but am I the only one who thinks that not holding these executives accountable is just plain inexplicable.
Perhaps it is simply random mass stupidity, or the power of the really big lie/coverup. The only explanation I have is the golden rule, that thems with da gold, makes da rules, and they still gots most of da gold.
So it goes.
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