Cramer's new book:
boston.com
BOOK REVIEW
Media man looms large in Street revelations
By Dolores Kong, Globe Correspondent, 11/24/2002
Jim Cramer, the original shock stock jock and cofounder of TheStreet.com, tells all in this book about himself and Wall Street.
True to his public persona, as witnessed over the years through such media as SmartMoney magazine, CNBC, Fox and a syndicated radio show, Cramer gets in your face with ''Confessions of a Street Addict'' - literally, if you consider his big mug staring at you from the book cover.
And also true to his persona, there's little subtlety or deep reflection apparent. The same way he's used phrases like ''you got screwed'' on air, Cramer hits the reader over the head with a baseball bat of a book.
You either love Cramer, or you hate him. Either way, he's omnipresent.
For Cramer fans, ''Confessions'' gives the inside scoop on his career, beginning with his love affair with stocks starting at age 9, his detour into crime reporting and Harvard Law School, his founding of a hedge fund and TheStreet.com, and the creation of his ''media man'' image.
For those who don't care for Cramer but want an insider's look at Wall Street, the book reveals the high-stakes game of running a hedge fund; the craziness of the dot-coms and overheated initial public offerings; and the conflicts of interest in the business.
But for investors who've been burned by the tech wrecks and the accounting scandals, the insider's view in ''Confessions'' may be too painful a reminder at this stage of the market meltdown.
As someone who's followed Cramer's career over the years, I was particularly interested in his version of events, particularly the controversy over whether he himself had a conflict when writing in SmartMoney about stocks he owned, and of the creation of TheStreet.com.
The way Cramer tells it, he was asked by his editor at the Dow Jones-owned SmartMoney to write about little-noticed small-cap stocks he liked as a money manager. ''That in itself wasn't smart. You should never write about small stocks you can impact easily; it is too fraught with ethical problems,'' he writes. ''But what really hanged me was that SmartMoney left off that little box at the end of the article that should have said, `Cramer & Co. had big positions in these stocks.'''
A front-page Washington Post article on the column led to investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission; by Dow Jones, which also owns the Wall Street Journal; and other media.
While the investigations found no wrongdoing, no story was ever written saying that, Cramer said. ''People I meet in business now remember the scandal as a generic `insider trading' rap even though the outcome produced no indictments, no pleas, and no guilt.''
Cramer finally quit the high-burnout business of hedge fund management in 2000, when the stress was no longer worth it, and his wife (the brains behind some of his best trades, and whom he fondly refers to as ''The Trading Goddess'') had had enough of his no-show for vacations and other family events.
But he's got his books, TheStreet.com, CNBC, and his radio show. (While the network syndicating the radio show recently announced its plans to end distribution of ''Jim Cramer's Real Money,'' there are plans to find another syndication partner.)
Cramer's still everywhere even if the investing public isn't as enamored with the Street as it was in the 1990s.
Confessions of a Street Addict
By James J. Cramer
Simon & Schuster
319 pages, $26
Dolores Kong, a former Boston Globe personal finance reporter, is now a financial planner and contributor to Boston's Business 1060 AM, WBIX. Reach her at D olores@fpps.net.
This story ran on page H2 of the Boston Globe on 11/24/2002.
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