Jim Cramer's Rant: 'Fiction in Financials'

Normally I'm not one to recommend financial madman Jim Cramer's rants. But I'll make an exception today for: Cramer Rages on Banks: 'Where's the SEC?!'. The video feed (embedded in the CNBC post) is well-worth a few minutes of your time, even to endure a short ad at the beginning. The CNBC post begins, "Why isn't the Securities and Exchange Commission getting more involved in the whole banking sector writedown situation? Especially since the numbers are likely to get worse, not better? That's what Jim Cramer, CNBC's resident stock guru, wants to know." Then continues:

… "It's all fiction!" [Cramer] declared during a forceful exchange ….

"How can we have these levels of fiction in financials after Sarbanes-Oxley? How do people get away with this? How do they live with themselves?"

Cramer made his comments while reviewing results from Merrill. But his real consternation surrounded the insurers who cover banking investments. Some of those insurers haven't come clean about their liabilities, Cramer speculated. Eventually they will, and then the "fiction" will disappear, he said.

The banking sector and its related industries are all too chummy, Cramer accused. That led the numbers related to mortgage investments -- investments that are currently souring -- to break from reality.

"I think the financial guys all belong to the same club and they got to protect each other," he said.

Worse, those executives behind the current credit crunch are unlikely to get any punishment for their mistakes and disingenuousness about their numbers, Cramer opined.

"I'm fed up with it. The American people should be fed up with it. And the SEC should be fed up with it," Cramer said.

"This is what the SEC is supposed to protect us from," he added. …

P.S. Cramer takes aim too at so-called "mortgage insurers".

Hat Tip: Paul Kedrosky, Infectious Greed.

Comments

[istt]

Why is it Cramer gets attention when he is saying things Jim Rogers, Bob Chapman, Stephen Roach, Bill Bonner and others have been saying for well over a year?

[Dave Iverson]

I guess Cramer gets attention because of his temper-tantrums. I only highlighted it because Cramer was now asking why the Securities Exchange Commission has been absent. I've been following many who have been asking -- for a long time -- why everyone on the regulatory front has been absent, and silent.

Barry Ritholtz shows the darker side of the Cramer rants, chants, in a very good expose of Cramer cheerleading the "bull", and glorifing the wonders of the so-called "free markets" not much before he turned the corner and began pleading for help from the Gov. Here's Ritholtz' post/video on Rick Santelli vs Jim Cramer: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/01/santelli-vs-cra.html