March 13, 2009 7:00 PM Street.com CEO quits after Cramerâs TV flameout Thomas Clarke, longtime chief executive of the financial news Web site, abruptly leaves, âeffective immediately.â Friday brought more tumult for CNBC anchor Jim Cramer, when the chief executive of his online financial news site, The Street.com, resigned. The company announced Friday that Thomas Clarke, TheStreet.comâs CEO for the past decade, would be leaving, effective immediately. Heâs been temporarily replaced by Daryl Otte, a longtime director on the companyâs board, who will serve as chief until the search committee, which he is leading, finds a new CEO. Outsized TV personality and chairman of the board Jim Cramer issued a boilerplate statement on Mr. Clarkeâs departure, saying only, âI want to thank Tom for his long-time service to the Company and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.â The abrupt nature of Mr. Clarkeâs departure only adds to the companyâs troubles in the current bear market. Its stock dropped below $2 per share this week, down from $9.50 per share a year ago. The stock in recent years had traded as high as $16 per share in December of 2007, but has suffered with the decline in the media and advertising markets. Its success was tied closely to Mr. Cramerâs popularity, and the recent heavy criticism of his bombastic television personality may be reflected in the companyâs performance. Mr. Cramer was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the bull market through his show Mad Money. Since the marketâs collapse last year, heâs come under heavy criticism for encouraging investors to believe that firms such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia and Citigroup were sound investments, when they were instead teetering on the edge of collapse. He caught flak last fall for creating market hysteria in October when he commanded viewers to âget out of the stock market now.â He later clarified his stance, saying that investors should take out of the market any money they think theyâll need for the next five years. He has been in a television talk-show feud with The Daily Showâs Jon Stewart for much of this year, appearing Thursday night on Mr. Stewartâs Comedy Central show, where he was mocked for the better part of 20 minutes. A Comedy Central spokeswoman said Friday that show featuring Mr. Cramer drew 2.3 million total viewers, making it second most-watched episode this year and one of the top 10 most-watched episodes in the program's history. Mr. Cramer co-founded TheStreet.com in 1996. When they took the company went public in 1999, it was valued at $60 per share, giving the company a market cap of about $1 billion.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/19/cramer-stewart-fued-conti_n_176778.html Cramer on today's Today Show. There's gotta be a diseased named after this guy for ignoring reality.
Idiotism. But I guess you can't blame the guy for feeding other idiots what they want -- crap! I suppose he's not such an idiot after all. The people who watch the idiotic show suffer from the most severe form of Idiotism.
Not withstanding his occasional revelation, the Cramster has been an obvious nut case for many years. That he has any viewership at all is a testimony to the LOW IQ of the American public. Then again, 95% of TV is aimed at imbeciles.
He is a nutcase for sure. But blaming Cramer is an easy scapegoat. If anyone out there is investing blindly on Cramer's calls, they deserve to lose money. Do your own research and you'll have nobody to blame (or praise) but yourself.
what about the other people? The ones working for a living in an honest business looking for where to put their money? You know, the ones who listen to the millions of dollars of ads. Those who believe the Brooks Bros suits, Gucci loafers. What do they call those people.? mmmmm Oh yeah. SUCKERS.
Interestingly TSCM is offering a "Chairman's Circle" service offering for $5000 a year (IIRC) that is kind of like Real Money Silver on steroids....looks like everything they offer. Not sure when this was rolled out, but as a Real Money subsciber (regular, not Silver) I hadn't noticed it until the other day. While I like some of their columnists, I absolutely hate their site design and web server performance, and am tempted to not renew after this year.