Remember that sweaty guy who helped lots of people make terrible decisions with their life savings before, and during, the financial crisis? Yeah. Well, he still does that. And now the SEC is investigating his website, TheStreet.com, over poor accounting.
CNBC didn't do the honorable thing and shut down today. So, Jim Cramer still has his psychotic money clown show which he opened tonight with the sort of humor that makes him a broadcast treasure.
Jim Cramer, CNBC's chief stock shouter and generally erratic personality, has at least one thing going for him: he owns up to his mistakes. Which are legion! It makes him a more sympathetic figure than he would be if he gave equally bad advice without appearing close to tears so often. But Cramer also stands by his advice that may yet prove to be wrong. Earlier this month he told everyone to yank all their money for the next five years out of the market. “It was one of the greatest calls of my life,” he told the NYT today. “And I’ve been pilloried for it.” Really? So far, Cramer's been "pilloried" more for the calls that he definitively got wrong, and for being a huge bull in general right up until the bottom fell out of the market. The reaction to his "pull your money out" rant was more slack-jawed amazement at how he could totally flip his entire investment philosophy without blinking. And, you know, at how he was about to cry. He may turn out to be right! We'll see in five years. I guess you can't expect him to know what the public thinks:
Eric Schmidt spent 18 minutes on CNBC yesterday talking to Mad Money's Jim Cramer, but per usual, the Google CEO didn't say much. Only about 60 seconds worth, we discovered after boiling the segment down to its crucial bits. Learn that Google is bad economy-proof, YouTube doesn't make money (and doesn't need to), and that shareholders should just stay quiet in the clip above.
Why is Jim Cramer, CNBC's millionaire Mad Money maniac, such a shouty little bag of nuts? "That chip on his shoulder may have been to do with a turbulent early career. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Florida and California before suffering a series of catastrophic mishaps in which his home was burgled and his bank account was emptied. In his autobiography, Cramer recounts being homeless for nine months and sleeping in a car in California with a gun for protection." [The Guardian via MediaBistro]
"Mad Money" host and bug-eyed madman Jim Cramer went on CNBC today to clarify his statements from last week about Bear Stearns, when he urged people not to move their money out of the firm. As we pointed out earlier in his defense, he was not referring to the company's stock, and his advice was actually perfectly sound. "Do you know what would happen on this show if I came out and said I want everyone to take their money out of X bank?" he ranted today. "Jim Cramer causes a run on X bank!" As it turns out, the run on the bank happened anyways. This video, originally posted on YouTube, features Cramer's defense today along with some, ahem, editorial comments against him; we have to say we still agree with him in this particular case. Although we would never take his stock tips. Click to watch the clip.
"Bear Stearns is not in trouble!" Jim Cramer, CNBC's bug-eyed "Mad Money" host who is to finance what Carrot Top is to comedy, shouted last Tuesday. "Don't move your money from Bear! That's just being silly." The immediate reaction to seeing his advice in the wake of Bear's collapse is: what an idiot. But really, his advice was not bad! Cramer—a famously bad prognosticator—noted that Bear would, at worst, be taken over, meaning those who had money with the firm would have their investments guaranteed by a more deep-pocketed buyer. Which is exactly what happened when JPMorgan bought Bear over the weekend. Note that he was not speaking about Bear's stock price [last Tuesday: over $60. Now: toilet paper]. What have we learned? Only Wild Jim Cramer can stop the collapse of the American economy. Click to watch the crazy savant's ill-fated harangue. [via WJNO]
Financial news network CNBC is in a tiff with the financial magazine Barron's, according to a ponderous but awesome story by the Columbia Journalism Review's Dean Starkman. Barron's decided to investigate CNBC meal ticket Jim Cramer, host of "Mad Money," and the network got pissed. The Barron's story began as a look into whether Cramer's stock picks might be leaking before broadcast somehow, which scared CNBC so much that it scurried around spending money on lawyers and sweating until that line of investigation was dropped. The final version of the piece didn't mention that, but it did say that Cramer's stock picks don't generally beat the overall market—not a stunning conclusion to financial types, but poison to Cramer's viewing audience, who watch him with hopes of getting rich. Now the TV network is so mad that it has mostly stopped inviting Barron's reporters onto shows. Starkman comes to the conclusion that both sides made some mistakes, but CNBC is almost totally wrong, while the Barron's story is mostly correct. So why the snippy move to ban the (innocent) reporters from the air? That's the most shine anybody at Barron's can hope for in their day-to-day life. End the embargo! [CJR] Remember: if you upset Jim Cramer, he goes PSYCHO like THIS:
In case you missed it, yesterday was Katie Holmes's Big Night—an evening to celebrate the Katie of long ago, famous not for suspicious pregnancies and dead-eyed Cruisian servitude, but for the skillful way she was once able to memorize words in scripts, and then perform those words in front of cameras. In other words, it was the premiere of Holmes's new movie, Mad Money. Arriving with her extremely proud, extremely touchy, extremely ever-present husband, Extra was on hand to document every moment of the full-time mom's triumphant return to the silver screen:
Tips began flooding the Defamer mailbox just minutes ago that Axium International, a leading entertainment industry payroll agency that works with Warner Bros. among other studios, shut their doors overnight and have apparently declared bankruptcy. We called their Los Angeles, Burbank and New York offices in an attempt to get comment, and all three calls went straight to the company voicemail (urging us to "call back during regular office hours"). One of our sources told us that Axium "fired everyone without warning" earlier today and is holding onto over $100,000 in payroll money recently deposited from the DGA. An email chain describing the situation that was sent to the LA Producers Yahoo group follows after the jump.
Ever since it was reported that irresolvable scheduling conflicts brought on by two years of unemployment prevented Katie Holmes from taking on a seven-figure gig reprising her Batman Begins character in The Dark Knight, we've eagerly anticipated getting a look at her big comeback project, Mad Money, in which Holmes joins up with gal pals Queen Latifah and Diane Keaton to rob the Federal Reserve. (Hilarity, as it invariably does in such high-concept situations, ensues.)
