Not a great example. The Bear Stearns tales about Cramer are one of the more egregious false smears. He has made some very powerful and vindictive enemies, and they have used that false story to great effect.
For anyone who happens to be intellectually curious, the famous story and video are clipped to reverse what actually happened.
The true story is that for WEEKS preceding the market crash, Cramer had been screaming to his readers, viewers, media of all kinds to sell ALL stocks. Months prior he was insisting on selling certain stocks, but then switched to a sell everything mode.
Then, like now, he was attacked by both uninformed casuals and his well informed enemies. They were experiencing market highs, and this clownish figure telling people to sell was portrayed as a paranoid fool.
He had actually been telling people to sell every bank - including Bead Stearns. He was correct in doing so, and that advice drastically helped anyone who listened.
The deceptive clip shows someone who emailed and knew not to buy Bear Stearns stock, but was asking what about their savings account at the bank, should they be pulling their cash out of bank deposits too?
That’s where you see him saying no, don’t do that. Leave your money there.
And he was 100% right. Those deposits were protected. Not one person lost a single penny of their deposit funds.
The other reason is she not to do that is because when people freak out and all withdraw their money from banks, it causes the country’s whole economy to fail. It’s described in simplistic form in the famous Christmas movie. But the point is he didn’t want to trigger a panic run on banks for no reason.
So despite being 100% right, being the only one who actually DID give consumers correct and useful warnings, and being responsible and ethical in his messaging, bad actors have taken that clip and lied about what it said and what it means.
There’s a handful of similarly unfair and dishonest smears that have been applied to him over the years.
There’s things about him that I could agree are “douchey”, especially in the last few months.
But this video clip and some of the others are just over the top misinformation.
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u/OhShitItsSeth 2d ago
Jim “Bear Stearns is doing fine” Cramer