...Nobody ever seems to have to give up anything, and nobody ever seems to lose a job, and nobody ever seems to even get prosecuted, provided they are bankers. It's like the job gives them immunity for all but insider trading, and they would probably have immunity from that, too, if we didn't have a tough and fair U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
This immunity is just one more injustice, not unlike the immunity that all of the bankers at Lehman or Bear Stearns or AIG or Countrywide received. It's not unlike the immunity the bankers received from the robo-signings. These bankers were the proximate cause of so many of our ills, yet somehow they evaded the law.
That's because banking is a lawless profession. To me these people are embezzlers, fraudsters and perhaps even gangsters in pinstripes. Their immunity makes a mockery of justice, and it explains why so many simply calculate that it's worth it, because even if they get caught, all that happens is shareholders pay. What a sweet deal they have on the rest of us.
I went through a VERY short phase in which I tried my hand at picking individuals stocks. My first one was NETGEAR at Cramer's recommendation. It did very well so I thought I was on a roll.
I don't even remember what the second pick recommended by Cramer was but it tanked big time (actually, it might even have been the very same NETGEAR but my memory is a little foggy).
MediumTex wrote:
Isn't Cramer a product of that world?
Is he saying that he no longer believes in the system that made him rich?
What he is saying is true, of course, but I don't get a sense of whether there is any personal repentance embedded in his diatribe.
Cramer is certainly a trader in terms of his investing modus operandi. But I have never heard any suggestion, even from his numerous critics, that he cheated in the way he ran his hedge fund. On the contrary Cramer has been a vocal critic of Wall Street corruption for many years.
Trumpism is not a philosophy or a movement. It's a cult.
Ad Orientem wrote:
But I have never heard any suggestion, even from his numerous critics, that he cheated in the way he ran his hedge fund. On the contrary Cramer has been a vocal critic of Wall Street corruption for many years.
It's Cramer talking about basically cheating in the way he ran his hedge fund while not technically violating the law. Reading between the lines, he seems to be saying that everyone cheats and thus you must cheat if you are going to play the game at all.
Here's a good snip at 5:11:
"What's important when you're in the hedge fund mode is to not do anything remotely truthful."
I'm not saying that this video means Cramer in on par with all the other criminals on Wall Street, but it makes him look a lot like the kinds of people he criticizes today. The thing that he seems oblivious to in this video is that the kind of antics he is talking about destroy public confidence in the integrity of the equity markets, which is something he frequently laments today.
Q: “Do you have funny shaped balloons?”
A: “Not unless round is funny.”