Enrico!

Jimmy Cramer is an entertainer, not a financial advisor. He is getting a lot of ribbing about this clip above, but I have to come to Jimmy’s defense a little bit in this specific case.

In this clip, he is NOT saying that holders of Bear’s common stock are going to be fine, he is saying that Bear’s CUSTOMERS, particularly its RETAIL customers are going to be fine. He is saying that there is no reason to flock to Bear’s door to withdraw your funds.

Of course, he was right about that. So lay off him. There’s plenty of other reasons to ridicule him.

My fellow Ephs, take note of EphBabe Erin Burnett coming on at the end this clip to report the summary execution of Bear.

I don’t know if anyone has already pitched this, but I hereby make a public offer to Jimmy Cramer’s peeps to develop a concept and write some scripts for a kid’s animated TV show, targeted notionally at Nick, based on Jimmy’s manic CNBC persona. My twelve old son is apt to remark “SellSellSellSellSellSell!” I won’t disclose the whole concept here, but Jimmy, have your people call my people and let’s take a meeting.

Ok, I’m off in ten minutes to gallivant with the Houston diplomatic corps, but I have to deliver a brief eulogy for Bear Stearns.

Bear Stearns died today. Helicopter Ben called up Jamie Dimon today and told him the printing presses were red hot, and he had an entire train loaded with greenbacks, and Ben asked Jamie politely if would accept several billion dollars in return for the favor of propping up the corpse for a while.

All deaths are sad, tragic, and scary, but this one is really the stuff of nightmares. When I worked on Wall Street, Bear Stearns was still Ace Greenberg’s company. Ace expected his employees to reuse rubber bands and paper clips. If a trader at Bear hit a home run, he could expect to be fired. “You might have struck out, you dumb fuck, why in goddamn hell didn’t you lay down the bunt like I told you???!!!!”

Well, goodie for Helicopter Ben. He’s got all the troops out tonight bracing themselves against all the dominos that are teetering in sympathy with Bear. I guess that’s good, but I wonder how Ben sleeps at night?

What is Trichet going to do when the first eurozone bank goes down? Will he unlock even a single centime to bail them out? Well, if he does, you know for sure that someone is holding a gun to his head.