The last chapter of Kate Kelly's Wall Street Journal epic on the decline and fall of Bear Stearns tells us that the "hurried deal" to keep Bear Stearns out of bankruptcy included a "loophole" that gave Bear Stearns investors leverage to seek a higher price. By now this story of the loophole is well-known, thanks in part to a New York Times front page story that first reported it. In time this story is likely to harden into conventional wisdom, especially now that it's been endorsed by both the Times and the Journal.

Unfortunately, the story probably isn't true.

Cramer raises a good question: why, of all the many, many things he’s been wrong about in the past, did Fox Business chose to dwell on his advice to keep one’s money with Bear Stearns, in today’s WSJ and NYT? Just out of curiosity.

How easy would it be to chalk Jim Cramer’s horrifically bad guidance to a Mad Money emailer last Tuesday to keep his money in Bear Stearns up to Jim Cramer being just plain clueless? I don’t know, very? But let’s think about this for a sec. JC’s given what’s known in the business as “shitty investment advice” in the past, that’s an incontrovertible fact. But has he ever been this off? As far as we can tell, he’s not officially retarded—or Tim Sykes. So what was it then, that made him tell “Peter,” “No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble. If anything, they’re more likely to be taken over. Don’t move your money from Bear”? Once again, the answer lies with Eliot Spitzer’s love of whores. As you well know, JC was very shook up about not being brought into the inner circle of Spitzer’s prostitution ring. He was in no position to be giving counsel about anything. Once the shock of the betrayal, or as he’s been referring to it among friends and colleagues “My Personal Crying Game,” wore off, Cramer came to his senses and said the common stock was “worthless” on Friday. What we're trying to say, Peter, is that you should cross “Uncle Jim” off your To Maim List, smear some red lipstick on your mouth, and start thinking about how to make Spitzer, and not James, pay for your losses (sources in his pants tell us Silda’s already gone for the obvious, so you’re really going to have to think outside the box on this one).

Oops - CNBC's Cramer Said 'Don't Move' From Bear a Week Before Collapse [Business & Media Institute]

Like we said yesterday, the most depressing thing about the revelation that Steamroller Spitzer spent 800 million dollars on whores over the last number of years is what’s it’s done to Jim Cramer. Appearing on the Today Show yesterday, guy was on the verge of tears the whole time and genuinely sounded like his heart had been smashed to into 4,300 tiny little pieces. Whole thing was very difficult to watch—we actually felt his pain. And, damn you Eliot Spitzer, when you start humanizing Jim Cramer, you have ruined standards for all of us. There is nowhere left to go. We didn’t think it could get any worse. We were wrong. Check out this picture, posted by a Gawker commenter. It’s Cramer and it’s Spitzer and it’s some guy nobody’s heard of (Client 8?), probably when they first met at Harvard Law. Set aside for a moment the question of why three guys are in a Cambridge, MA photo booth together and just look at how happy they are! Cramer still has hair, Spitzer hasn't yet discovered hookers, well, not expensive ones anyhow, and guy nobody’s heard of has funky glasses, and is still anonymous enough not to be associated with either of them. I bet, even as I type these very words, funky glasses is tossing those funky glasses in a dumpster in the alley behind his house, and donning a fake moustache. And shouting, "You go to hell, Eliot Spitzer. You go to hell and die!”

Jim Cramer announced on a "Wall Street Confidential" segment today that he's renouncing tech, which tech must really be beating itself up over, the loss of Uncle Jimbo's support. Why is he turning his back on a sector he previously shilled for like Alfonso Reibera for Pepsi? Well, he's "frustrated" with it. It's the only cohort where you get a good earnings per share number and the stocks do nothing or go down, it's the worst risk-reward in the game, no "pizzaz," no new product cycles. The disappointment of VMware, blah blah blah let's just cut the bullshit. The real reason Cramer is suddenly saying he was wrong about Tech is that he read a piece from this very website earlier this morning in which the author said he agreed with the bobblehead and it's just been constant waves of revulsion pulsating through his body ever since. Those close to him say that Cramer has put in motion a two part cleansing process (which he'll discuss on "Mad Money" later today). Step 1: take back anything he's ever said about anything ever Step 2: ritual suicide on Fox Business (pay-per-view perhaps, though the particulars are still being hammered out).

Earlier: Street.com Correspondent Gets First Date As Result of iPhone

Cramer Throws in the Tech Towel [thestreet.com]

The New York Post is making a big to do about Jim Cramer losing a $50,000 wager to Eric Bolling, having bet that financial services would be the “hottest sector” of ’07 (Bolling said oil and gold). People who watch Cramer’s show (…) and took his advice lost a bunch of money which the paper think is an OUTRAGE, and a crime worthy of jail time. We pretty much think this falls under the Countrywide Clause (which states that anyone dumb enough to give Angelo “Tanning Bed” Mozillo their money deserves to get screwed) but what the hey, we’ll play along.

'MAD' JIM CRAMER LOSES GOLDEN $50K BET [NYP]

When it comes to making strange bedfellows, modern finance makes politics look like an old-fashioned match-maker. The most famous words on the current financial turmoil came not in the form of a political speech from a major presidential candidate, but from Jim Cramer, a former hedge fund manager turned popular CNBC stockpicker and market prognosticator. His five-and-half minute call for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, however, strangely recalls the most famous political speech of an earlier era—William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The emotional desire of the nineteenth-century populist movement Bryan led was to smash the power of Plymouth Rock, which stood for old New England and Wall Street. The emotional desire of what Dan Gross has called “the Punch Bowl Caucus” is to cut interest rates—return the punch bowl—to jazz up the Wall Street party again. But they share an emotional tone—and, more importantly, an economic goal: the loosening of a monetary policy they claim is so tight it is ruining ‘their people.’

Gross’s essay nicely describes the membership of the Punch Bowl Caucus: Wall Street investment banks, hedge fund traders, private equity managers, the chief executives of heavily indebted automakers, the heads of home loan businesses, supply-siders who believe “the government should never intervene in the economy, unless it is to bail out hedge funds and investment banks,” and internationalists who worry about what would happen to the developing world if Americans suddenly quit spending their earnings on foreign goods.

Since they share an emotional tone and the goal of loose money that inspired the old Populism, but differ in their background, let us adopt “Wall Street Populism” as the proper term for the Punch Bowl Caucus. It is, after all, something of a Free Silver movement with gilted edges.

There are, of course, crucial differences. The old populist were openly egalitarian radicals while the Wall Street Populists are openly elitist radicals—concerned about the jobs and firms of people who have been in the financial industry for, as Cramer put it, “twenty-five years.” The old populists viewed Wall Street and the railroads as their enemy. The Wall Street Populists are, well, closely tied to Wall Street. The old populists spoke in the eloquent and evocative images built from the Christian tradition. The language of the Wall Street Populists is less burdened by syntax, tradition or allusion.

That the cause of looser money gone from those who wished to smash Plymouth Rock on the Grand Canyon to those who want to keep Wall Street afloat on free credit shows how different twenty-first century finance is from nineteenth century finance. You know that Wall Street long ago stepped through the looking glass when a hedge fund manager adopts the cause of William Jennings Bryan. We’d call it “unreal” except that it is all too real.

The Punch Bowl Caucus [Slate]

In the latest video from TheStreet.Com TV, James “Uncle Jumbo” Cramer defends his alleged nephew Cliff Mason’s review of the iPhone. Uncle Jumbo explains that all the talk of the phone being a “babe magnet” was really just Cliff’s way of explaining the buzz around the phone that is driving sales and Apple’s stock price.

We were trying to decide what we thought of this rationale so we went back to Cliff’s original video, in which he shows the phone to the fetching host of the program, Farnoosh Torabi. “Can I touch it?” she asks. And yes, of course Cliff lets Farnoosh touch it. Who wouldn’t?

Uhm, what were we talking about. Oh, right. The Cliff Mason-iPhone Incident. We think maybe Cliff was telling us about the buzz using some of the lingo of these crazy kids. But then again, maybe he just meant that it’s a babe magnet. After all, one of the first text messages we ever got from an iPhone read: “Chicks dig it.

The Cliff Mason-iPhone Incident made Page Six headlines on Sunday. “Mason, in a streaming-video feed, says he bought the gizmo because he ‘wasn't doing anything at the time’ and had ‘money to burn,’” Page Six explains. “It was worth it because he was soon surrounded by curious women. Asked by thestreet.com's Farnoosh Torabi about the required iPhone switch from Verizon to AT&T, Mason shrugged and said his dad paid the bills.”

[Editor’s Note: we’re extinguishing the comments option for this post because getting raked over the coals by both Bess Levin and Page Six in the course of just a couple of days is enough punishment for anyone. No need to pile it on any further.]

Correction: The purchase of an iPhone did not land Cliff Mason, Jim Cramer’s nephew, his first date. It just got the ladies on the street (dot com) to stand up and take notice when he whipped it out (are you picking up what we’re throwing down? Does anyone else think DealBreaker should close at noon on summer Fridays? For everyone’s sake?). Whipping out his iPhone was much more effective in getting the opposite sex to say “I’d like a piece of that young-looking James Cramer” than Cliff’s BlackBerry was (hint: don’t wear it in a holster, toots). For instance, in line at J.Crew:

Picture this: I'm just standing in line [at the J.Crew near my apartment], answering some email, when the fetching cashier who's ringing me up begs to "see" my iPhone and then asks me half a dozen questions about how I like it.

As soon as she gets her hands on the thing, the cashier next to her catches sight of it and flashes me a look of what I can only describe as sheer ecstasy before asking if she, too, can take a look. When the two women on either side of me and the one in line behind me realized there was an iPhone owner in their midst, they reacted like I was one of the Beatles, circa 1964.

Like a Backstreet Boy circa 1996. Like a member of N’Sync circa 1997. But we digress. Now tell us about the waitress at BLT Burger:

I had a similar experience when I went to BLT Burger, which I cannot recommend too highly, and my waitress couldn't take her eyes off of it. Sadly, my girlfriend was with me, so I couldn't empirically test the full extent of the iPhone's magnetic capabilities.

On another note, we’d like to offer Cliff an apology. Not because we called out the lack of disclosure about him being Cramer’s nephew, or for calling attention to his own admission of the fact that his father pays his Verizon bill, but because he will now apparently be forced to call Cramer ‘Uncle Jimbo,’ in the biblical sense. For the rest of you, take this as a warning: you disclose or you get the hose.

An iPhone: The Best $600 You'll Ever Waste [thestreet.com]

The Street spells it out in simple chapter and verse today: scoring tail is our bottom line, and you can do this, via the iPhone. Who did they enlist to test out this theory? Why it’s “Street Dot Com Staff Writer” Cliff Mason, who they don’t tell you is also Jim Cramer’s nephew. It wasn’t that nepotism is the name of the game at TS.com, but that Cliff was quite obviously the perfect candidate to prove that no matter how seemingly dorky, inept vis-à-vis the ladies (the exchanges with Farnoosh Torabi, "Street.com correspondent” are particularly revealing) and Cramer-brand smug you are, with the iPhone in hand, you will attract the opposite sex, no questions asked.

Other reasons Cliff bought the mobile? Well, first of all, he “wasn’t doing anything” at the time and he “has money to burn,” which is why he “really didn’t think about it too much.” What about switching plans, did that pose any problems or headaches? Nah. Cliff was on Verizon but he really didn’t think twice about switching over to an AT&T contract. His dad, Mr. Mason one presumes, is still paying for the Verizon one.

The iPhone Equals Babe Magnet [Thestreet.com]

Have you taken stock of your surroundings lately, and noticed there are far fewer crazy people screaming at you to buy this stock and that stock while banging a gong and shooting up smack as a cute and entertaining way of showing you how the market’s going to—here it comes—“shoot up,” than there used to be, during the dot com boom? Come now, you say, are you familiar with a man named Jim Cramer. Yes, indeed we have heard of this man of which you speak, but according to the Chicago Tribune HE IS A DYING BREED. And at a time when we need him and his kind the most, and they need us!

When the Dow Jones hit 25 new records this year, we were here. Where were they? When the SPX closed Wednesday at its highest point since 2000, we were here (in the midst of battle to the death with Carney, vis-à-vis a ping pong tournament, but here, nonetheless). Where were they? Where, god, WHERE?

Nice article in New York today by Jim Cramer about Jim Cramer. In it, he asks the question “Why does everybody hate me?” and then proceeds to answer it, with supporting statements and quotes by him. He also explains why he’s famous (fearlessness! And because he’s the only one who knows how the markets work) and why a C-note signed by Jim Cramer (“Wherever I go I get asked for my autograph”) could be worth up to $100 in five years, taking inflation into account. Not to spoil anything, but, for the most part, it’s basically everything we always hear by Cramer, about Cramer: worked at Goldman Sachs blah blah blah…Eliot Spitzer, who I went to Harvard with, is a god blah blah blah…thestreet.com blah blah blah…I predicted that Rosie O’Donnell would leave The View ten years ago blah blah blah…hilarious exchange between Cramer and Cramer blah blah blah. We’re not saying the six (web) page piece is worthless, but if you’re the sort of person that values your time, join us now, as we break it down: by the numbers.

Considering that he told his bosses at Goldman Sachs about the insane money making machine that is asset management years before they did anything about it, and sensed that the Japanese were up to something, re: Pearl Harbor, on December 7-- 1935, it’s not surprising to hear what The Crames told Liz Claman yesterday about the Deal of The Century:

Rupert Murdoch called me in 1996 when DJ was in the 40s, higher than it is now, and asked me if he should make a 73 dollar bid. I suggested at the time that family would reject it and that he should go directly to it. Obviously ten years have past, the stock is substantially down, and the company may be fed up.

Of course. Cramer knows about every deal. Way in advance. Eleven years in advance. Jim Cramer is eleven years ahead of all of us. He's living in 2018 right now. He already knows about SiriusXM buying Clear Channel-- at $2/share.

Cramer on News Corp's Dow Jones Bid [CNBC]

Jim Cramer doesn’t want you to hate the game, or the playa. And in his column in the latest issue of New York, the “game” refers to making money; the “playas,” I-bankers (and I-bank CEOs, and, more generally, I-banks). Sure, you might be saying, why shouldn’t I hate the $54 million/year Lloyd Blankfeins and the Goldman Saches of the world? Not only are they terribly unhygienic, but they make more in an hour than I do in a month (or is that just us at DB? Don’t answer that) and I’m a jealous, small and petty person (to say nothing of my unresolved issues from childhood, which probably feed into the pettiness in a vicious, never-ending circle).

You’re saying that, right? Well Big J has the answer. If you invest said “playas,” you’ll get to be part of their “game” and your resentment will disappear because when you’re rich, you can buy the antidote to resentment. Another reason you shouldn’t hate these “playas” is because Cramer used to work for Goldman Sachs and never fails to mention this (or his relationship with Spitzer, which, let’s be honest, you really can’t blame him for, because Goldman Sachs is an incredible institution and Spitzer is essentially God’s special gift to the world and politics at large). Here are some other arguments for why you should cross Lloyd, Dick and Stanley off of your To Kill lists (hint: they all have to do with their outifts making you money, and Chuck Prince having less financial acumen than Cramer’s garbage disposal):

1. These guys are basically stay-at-home moms: underpaid and, more importantly, unappreciated.

Stop envying Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein already. Don’t begrudge Bear Stearns’ Jimmy Cayne and Lehman’s Dick Fuld their millions. Let Merrill’s Stan O’Neal and Morgan Stanley’s John Mack get paid more than Croesus. You heard it here first: They deserve it. In fact, they deserve more than they earn now. Those five men are underpaid because they are about to make you very rich if you buy their stocks.

2. They will make you Kings of Great Neck, Dukes of Roslyn with Asset Management alone. And, not to brag or anything, but if you must know, Cramer predicted Asset Management would be a major money-maker YEARS AGO, before assets were even invented. Of course, no one at 85 Broad listened to him, just like they didn’t about gravity or 9/11.

An anonymous reader unexpectedly found himself riding home in a cab with Jim Cramer. Kind of.

Apparently, CNBC is now available on the backseat televisions of some taxis. And last night our loyal reader got in just as Jim Cramer instructed viewers on how to prepare for market corrections. So, of course, he sent in the camera phone picture you see to the left.

We love this sort of thing. In fact, we'd love to hear from you any time you spot a financial bold name. Camera phone pictures are appreciated but not strictly necessary. Email to tips@dealbreaker.com. Thanks!

If Henry Blodget’s been Googling himself lately, he’s probably pretty pleased with the results: the “I own this town” picture to your left is the second thing that comes up when you search for images of the old rapscallion. If Henry Blodget’s been Googling Jim Cramer lately—and let’s be honest: that’s the more likely scenario—he’s probably very pleased with the results: some unhappy cult members are calling for Cramer's head.

On March 28 JC told viewers to sell shares of Dendreon, a biotechnology company in Seattle, a call that “turned out to be dead wrong.” The stock price has tripled since the day after Cramer’s recommendation (closing Thursday at $18.05.)

Here’s where it gets ugly:

One trader discovers the reason CNBC refuses to fire criminal show-host, Jim Cramer. Hint: Bernie's gold dust.

[via Fly On Wall Street]

It’s time for a change of pace. You really didn’t think we were just going to blog about Blackstone all day long, did you?

Of course not. There’s always more in “What’s Happening In Jim Cramer” to write about. And, of course, we find it irresistible when another DealBreaker favorite, Henry Blodget, and Cramer find themselves in the same room. Or chat room. Or, you know, those two names appear on the same webpage.

(You can read more about Blodget vs. Cramer here.)

In his “How to lose your money fast” column on Slate, Blodget writes that Cramer may not be able to Boo-yah his way out of the mess created by his comments on the now infamous theStreet.com video. Blodget thinks the charges against Cramer are more serious than some think. In fact, Cramer’s remarks may amount to “professional suicide” according to the Blodge, who knows what he’s talking about when it comes to suicide. The floppy-haired writer made his living as an analyst before being barred from the securities industry for life as part of a settlement with the SEC.

“Can CNBC really say nothing when one of its most visible employees urges investors to use the network to engage in behavior that is questionable to say the least?” Blodget writes.

We’re not going to say anything about this whole “can CNBC really say nothing” question because they totally gave us a tiny red bull doll and a Cramer DVD after we went on the show last week. And champagne! And a trip to beautiful Englewood Cliffs! )

Okay, we’ll say just one word: Maria.

Meanwhile, DealBook points out that Cramer’s remarks probably haven’t won him many friends. “For those already predisposed to believe that hedge funds engage in shady practices, the interview seemed to confirm their worst suspicions. For many in the hedge fund business, Mr. Cramer seemed to smear an entire industry unfairly,” DealBook says.

Cramer vs. Cramer [Slate.com]
Did Jim Cramer Cross the Line? [DealBook]

Jim Cramer called into "Imus In the Morning" yesterday to try to pour some cold water on that fire he started when he described what some have called a "How To Guide To Market Manipulation" on a theStreet.com video. You can listen to the audio clip of the interview here. Cramer's excuse: he's given to hyperbole and didn't do a good job of explaining what he did (legal things) and didn't do (illegal things).

We're kind of bored by the whole scandal--it's pretty clear Cramer didn't really admit to doing anything illegal (or at least nothing illegal that isn't done by lots and lots of other hedge fund managers every day) and describing how various players game markets is hardly a crime against the public interest. Sure this sort of thing might hurt "investor confidence" but there's a very good reason you don't go into buisness with men whose title begins with confidence.

Also, Cramer is totally still what Bess would call "BFF" with Bob Pisani, the CNBC reporter he used as the model for the type of guy to whom hedge funds might feed manipulative stories. Bob's "one of the best," he says.

It's kind of disappointing because there's nothing we love better than a good scandal, especially one involving greed, Wall Street and guys who throw chairs against the wall. So we're onto the next scandal: the battle of the conflics of interest. Here's the line up.

Cramer & theStreet.com. Cramer founded theStreet.com, which has received a lot of attention from this scandal. Who even knew they had video before this story broke? Talk about a viral video campaign!

Cramer & NBC. The has also drawn attention away from the much more embarrassing stories swirling around about ace reporter Maria Bartiromo. Admittedly, that story had began to fade simply because of lack of oxygen (meaning, there was nothing new coming out) and our own attention deficit disorder. But when DealBreaker hasn't written the words Todd Thompson for days, you know the focus has shifted.

Cramer & NBC, II. Cramer clears his name on the Don Imus show, which is broadcast on MSNBC, a news network that is somehow or another related to CNBC. (You can tell because they both have the same last name.)

Cramer & Newscorp.Cramer brought this up himself on the Imus show. But in the interest of fairness (heh) we'll let the New York Post tell the story.

Cramer made sure to get in several scripted digs at The Post and its parent company, News Corporation.

"I think most of the discipline is coming from organizations that have kind of an edge against maybe CNBC, maybe of the FOX venue, the "New York Post venue," he said.

"It's almost as if they're about to launch their own business channel."

Oh snap!

Boo Hoo: Cramer [New York Post]

You’ve got to love Jim Cramer, whose car—we’re told—is a adorned with a pair of fuzzy dice and a great big “Fuck it, I do what I want” bumper sticker below the right tail light.* Aesthetic sensibilities aside, it’s this sociopathic belief that he can do or say anything he wants that may put Jimbo in some hot water with the SEC, CNBC and a few of his colleagues in the Englewood Cliffs cafeteria. Although we’re told that Cramer is actually not a CNBC employee --and thus perhaps not subject to all of the constraints that would come with working for CNBC-- it stands to reason that he must have some sort of a morality clause in his contract. Such a clause would likely say that he cannot publicly disparage a colleague (Bob Pisani) or, as someone close to the matter put it, “pissing on another reporter” is most likely a violation of his contract (and standard rules of decorum in the Western world). Jonathan Wald and Co. were also probably not so pleased with Sideshow Bob not even trying to pull a, “If I Did It,” this is how I did it deal but more of a “I Definitely Did It” and this is how.

A few people also seem to believe that the SEC can make Cramer “give back ill-gotten gains,” especially since they apparently “hate him.” But Cramer seems to rest assured that his relationship with Eliot Spitzer, forged at Harvard, will protect him. At a lecture at the 92nd Street Y a few months back, Cramer told the audience that a reporter had called him to get dirt on the couple, and his response was “I’m never going to say anything bad about the Spitzers.” When pressed further for comment, Cramer asked him, “What do you need to know?” the answer apparently being “Something no one’s ever said about Shiva (Eliot’s wife).” Cramer offered, “She’s a knock-out.” That kind of street cred has got to count for something. Cramer also bragged about being tight with his former boss at Goldman Sachs, Jon Corzine, who he was neighbors with in Summit, New Jersey for more than several years. So it’s good to know he’s covered in both NY and NJ. He’s probably also only one or two working lunches with CT AG Blumenthal away from a tri-state area hat trick of immunity.

Perhaps most shocking in all of this is the fact that at the time we’re putting up this post—2:01 p.m.—Hank Blodget has made no mention of Mr. Cramer on InternetOutsider.com. This can only mean one thing—he’s up to something.

Earlier: Jim Cramer: How To Manipulate Stock Prices

*We have no reason to believe that the person who told us this has ever seen Jim Cramer's car.