Like the rest of us, Cramer is not pleased with the never-ending mess at Nortel
Nortel's Restatement Rap Wears Thin
By James J. Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
If you had to figure out a way to make your stock less own-able than Nortel (NT:NYSE) , my hat's off to you. I have done my best to be patient with these rubes. But I have to admit, the continual "No, we aren't ready to restate, we need a few more months" rap is about as worn-out a come-on as I can ever recall.
I decided to de-emphasize this stock in my Action Alerts PLUS portfolio, in which I rank the holdings at the end of each week, because of the unforgivable chicanery. But there actually may be something worse than chicanery: Owning a stock without a clue about its financials.
That's what Nortel's asking us to do.
I know you can't rush the accountants and you want to get it right, but at the pace Nortel is going, it will need three years to figure out how to restate three years of earnings, or lack thereof.
Nortel's become a comedy, a comedy of crooks and errors. I search and search and search for a silver lining to the situation, and, believe it or not, I think I have come up with it: "By the time Nortel reports, all of its shareholders will be dead, so there will be no one left to sell." |
