Monday, July 26, 2010

Jim Cramer admits to manipulating stock prices when he was a fund manager.

Jim CramerImage by talkradionews via Flickr
When I was a policeman, I always felt relief when a perpetrator finally admitted to his wrong doing. It was a corroboration of the evidence that I already had, coming from the person who did the dirty deed.

Humans have an innate yearning to "come clean" on their sins, and that is the reason why so many people actually admit the wrong doing.  It gives them a sense of relief not unlike the relief felt by Catholics when confessing their sins to a priest, and then doing penance for their sins. The relief is instant.

However, when such a confession happens in a simple conversation between an interviewer and a guest on T.V., it sometimes goes either unnoticed, or unappreciated, by the people listening, as their interest did not, at first, lie with hearing a "confession"! It essentially gets lost in the context of the greater interview.

In the interview in question, however, one would have to fall asleep to overlook the confession of an otherwise honest man who often "says it like it is".  Jim Cramer of "Mad Money" fame on CNBC did exactly this in an interview which has been posted online.

To listen to that "confession" on YouTube (see Jim Cramer admits ) is to understand that the markets today, are susceptible to a whole range of manipulations, from Central Banks, to fund managers to the glorified salesmen, masquerading as investment advisers, who are paid huge sums by Wall Street firms to corral investors into believing in the "integrity" of those firms.

Jim is merely an honest man who admits to some "otherwise legal" manipulations of stocks for the benefit of his fund and his clients. However, if you multiply by the hundreds of otherwise honest fund managers doing similar manipulations on behalf of their funds and clients, by the number of out and out con men such as Bernie Madoff, who have entered the great Casino, through the front door of Business Schools, contacts and friendships, it is little wonder that the average Joe has been running for the exits in the past few years.

Folks, as comedian George Carlin once proclaimed, "Wall Street is a big club, and your not in it"!


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