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The Greatest Depression | 01/08/2009 4:05 am

CNBC's Cramer Calls for Indictments (About Time)

Perp Walk Alert! CNBC’s crazy but influential Jim Cramer calls for a special prosecutor for Wall Street. This is going to get good
By Deborah Barrow, Editor-in-Chief

Oh, yessssss, fellow pitchfork populists, turn off the tine sharpener for a minute and stop thanking Shiva yet again for not letting George Bush privatize your Social Security checks, to hear that last night, one of the most influential voices on Wall Street, the buffoonishly brilliant Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money, staged a 12-minute rant calling for wholesale indictments and perp walks and invocation of RICO racketeering laws for the Big Boyz of Wall Street. Using a Lehman Brothers cap as a totem, Cramer called for a special prosecutor to round up the reckless whose hubris, greed and, as is increasingly clear to even their biggest apologists, criminality, destroyed the financial underpinnings of the whole damn country. 

It’s delicious. Let’s listen in …

Jim Cramer’s Rico Rant of 1/7/09

Do not be fooled, gentle ladies of wowOwow, into thinking that just because this guy uses honking horns and silly props and hideous asides and ridiculous jokes that every word of this tirade of his isn’t making the blood run cold in certain Park Avenue penthouse perches and hedge-fund hedgerow hideouts in the Hamptons and Greenwich. And that Lehman Brothers hat he wore as a prop? That sucker will end up in the Smithsonian some day. 

And you can rest assured that his final remarks are making the rounds this morning in the halls of a Justice Department now led by a president-elect who campaigned on change: 

Memo to Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s new head of the Justice Department: We need right now a special prosecutor just for financial crimes. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this unless you’ll (his viewers) never come back to the stock market.

52 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Ann Coulter Crazy, Souless, Evil B*tch
Deborah B—Great writing….RICO racketeering..now I’m feelin’ the love. But didn’t we just hand the crooks an unaccountable $700B…and doesn’t Paulson look and sound like a walking ‘Wanted” poster.
Dab-a- do
Oh, Suzanne, if only we could see the ones responsible being held accountable!!!! I’m feeling the love,lol. I just love you!!
By Dab-a- do on 01/08/2009 6:34 pm
f p
Frankly I’d like to see those bastards tried, convicted, sentenced and sent to the slam for a goodly number of years and their Swiss, Cayman accounts forfeit to the Fed. Trouble is: not enough accountants in the FBI to handle all the activity—it could take years for an investigation; “Made-off” is only the tip of the iceberg.
By f p on 01/08/2009 6:01 am
Ann Coulter Crazy, Souless, Evil B*tch
Frank… There are lightening fast computerized derivative trading programs to cover their crimes. [Enron perfected this] They buy stocks long and short on both sides of the trade; back and forth, back and forth, with tons of computerized trades—like check kiting— and ‘create’ larger and larger falacious profits out of thin air from the volume of trades. When they get to a pre-determined amount they ‘sell’ and whisk false profits automatically into a numbered account in an off-shore Cayman Island shell-bank [or Lichtenstein/Isle of Man, etc] By this method they create and steal alot; and/or hide a lot of financial crimes in a nearly untraceable manner that also seriously destabilizes markets, stocks, and leaves others holding the financial bag. Today derivatives nominal value exceeds 12 times the size of the global economy. This happened SINCE 2001 when Phil Graham/GOP totally deregulated derivatives…we now have a global economy that is akin to a casino/ Russian Rouletter…with derivatives nothing but bets. THE BUSHES SINCE PRESCOTT BUSH< THE GRANDFATHER…have ALWAYS been involved in massive scale/global financial crimes. It was Sandy Weil [evil CEO of Citigroup] his best bud Ken Lay, George Bush Sr, and Feliz Roythan of Schlumberger that restructured Wall St in the 80s when all the M&As that then goobled up companies and lost so many jobs—commenced. They have NO allegiance to the US…only their own gain. The #1 thing Obama should do is re-regulate to stablize the markets. Can pump in all the $$$ in the world…and the crooks will just game that too without reasonable regulation……..Just one more legacy of the evil NeoCons and their propagandists. Enron used this untraceable method to game California out of $9 Billion….even George Soros doesn’t go near them saying ‘no one understands them.” And as far as the FBI…they just recently got email. So how adept are they? http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6756.html http://www.magnum.com/hedgefunds/marketneutral.asp http://pagesperso-orange.fr/pgreenfinch/bfglo/bfglo.model.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market
f p
Yep, tight regulation, transparency and regulators who know what they’re doing are the keys and they have to be implemented ASAP. Also the SEC needs a thorough house-cleaning—As for the names you mentioned i try not to speak them—they have a tendency to make me wanna puke—criminals all..
By f p on 01/09/2009 7:33 am
Rainbow Power
My opinion is to borrow Illinois Federal investigator, Patrick Fitzgerald. Of course after Blago’s conviction that is. Mr. Fitzgerald exemplifies the true meaning of fighting crime and getting his man.
By Rainbow Power on 01/08/2009 7:54 am
Ann Coulter Crazy, Souless, Evil B*tch
Yes, and so did Eliott Spitzer until he got so arrogant and was in actuality exposing the financial crimes that sunk our economy…..and that is why he got the political hit. I always wondered why he hadn’t had a ‘car accident’…but they got him where he was vulnerable. Posing as a crime fighting boy scout while having an over-developed taste for whores. Boom. Problem solved and extracted revenge against ‘Mr. Clean.’ Too bad…he was ‘on the money’ pun intended; re the criminal activities of Wall Street that did us in.
C jay
They” are not so unusual, “Ann.” More commonly the flip-sides of the same coins they are trashing.
By C jay on 01/12/2009 1:13 am
f p
Yeppers—Fitzgerald would certainly do the job creditably.
By f p on 01/09/2009 7:30 am
f p
Also the head of the SEC when given accurate info re Made-off chose to ignore it and should also be held accountable.
By f p on 01/08/2009 8:13 am
Frannie Em
Frank I heard that as well. They were warned a few times over several years. Shameful
By Frannie Em on 01/08/2009 11:54 am
f p
Criminally culpable IMO.
By f p on 01/08/2009 12:09 pm
georgia fatwood
Hi Frank…Met a guy in a bar once who said his name was Dash Bachoff…..Can’t help but think about that these days….Hope your justifiable fury is having a warming effect….! Br-r-r-r…..
By georgia fatwood on 01/08/2009 12:44 pm
f p
Not with my honey in Antarctic waters just now it ain’t/
By f p on 01/08/2009 12:55 pm
Ann Coulter Crazy, Souless, Evil B*tch
If our Founding Fathers were still alive most of the NeoCons and Paulson and others would be hanging from trees.The French public found that very effective, When people are afraid of the government that’s Tyranny…when the Government is afraid of the people…that’s real democracy. I thought the French people had a blood thristy streak when I was younger and contemplated them cutting off King Louis’s head while they cheered and ate their lunch in the square. Now I think…my personification was a tad hasty.