jennings rampage

Fuck Jim Cramer.

Plenty of people are still freaking out about Jim Cramer wandering over to the Today Show yesterday to put on his Chicken Little costume. “OMFGZ,” our inner thoughts IM to each other, “Jimbo wants us to get out of the stock market! That CAN’T BE GOOD! It’s a natural part of the End of Times!”

Ok voices, cool out. Let’s take a half-sec for some pondering: how does Jim Cramer make his money? If you said “the stock market,” partial credit. If you said “writing books and squawking loudly on television about the stock market,” move to the head of the class. Cramer is in the business of telling people what they want to hear — people wanted to hear that they could be smarter than the stock market and listen to HOTT STOCK PIXX and come out way way ahead, and Jimbo delivered; now people with money in the market are super duper skittish and want an excuse to hide under their beds with Ron Paul and his gold bars, and Jimbo will deliver again.

Cramer is doing what they in the fancy media business call “reinventing himself.” One silver lining in all of this is maybe — just maybe — the day of the squawking obnoxious sound effect cartoon gibberish wheel-of-you-can’t-lose personality may be drawing to a close. Eventually, we’re going to stop taking these people seriously, and praise Greenspan, praise Buffett, that day may be here. Cramer’s not an idiot, he knows he can’t publish a book called Watch TV, Get Rich again. If he wants to have a job next week, he’s going to have to start acting like an adult.

So, what was the core of Jimbo’s sage advice? Don’t put money in the stock market that you’ll need in the next five years. Well, pardon me for not putting a finer point on this, but no shit, Sherlock. And of course, God bless Ann Curry, she’s got no clue. “Very dramatic statement, Jim.” Nonsense.

If you lost money that you’re going to need in the next five years in the stock market, I feel bad for you, but this is what we call “gambling.” If you’re going to gamble, get ready for Kobe’s ankle to go out in the first quarter, get ready for that tourist to hit his inside straight draw, and get ready for the world to collectively wake up and realize the price of tulips is ridiculous. And the fact that gambling on sports and in Vegas is tightly fenced in and regulated but gambling on Wall Street is perfectly legal should crystallize that nagging anti-establishment feeling you had been trying to suppress to be a good American. The whole world is fucking horseshit. Don’t let Jim Cramer get away with it.