OT: It's Cramer vs. the Peanut Gallery
They don't call him TheStreetfighter.com for nothing. James Cramer, hedge-fund manager and columnist for TheStreet.com, has taken on a new enemy: TheStreet.com's stock message board on Yahoo!, on which he says short sellers want to ruin him and his company.
Cramer has said: ''Nothing is beyond attack in that cesspool. It's all personal.'' Starting in late August, he began staging a counterattack, responding to the messages under the alias Creme_Delacramer. He told the posters that the board ''has all the elements of a conspiracy to humiliate and discredit me and to drive down the stock price.'' He also writes: ''I am not hyping [the stock] as we have made many, many mistakes at TSCM. I am just tired of reading fraud.''
Cramer may be on to something. On Sept. 6, the Securities & Exchange Commission charged 33 companies and individuals, including a chauffeur and a mechanic, with Internet frauds such as posting false information on message boards. The SEC won't say if it is investigating Cramer's charges.
Some postings are serious. Many say that, contrary to his company's policy, Cramer shorts stocks that he knocks in his columns, and that he even shorts The Street.com itself, charges Cramer denies. He says there have also been threats to his family. Yet some other postings are merely catty. Reads one: TheStreet.com is ''the online financial equivalent of the National Enquirer, only without the profits.'' An angry Cramer has obtained and revealed one poster's real name. He won't say how he got the name but says he may get others and publish them, too.
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