Holy bleep!

If you haven’t heard about Jim Cramer yet, you owe it to yourself to read the following, and then research some more on the Internet!

I’m not sure how I’ll tie this in to real estate, but it’s simply too incredible to pass this story over…

The man you see in the photo above is Jim Cramer, stock guru.

Wow.  “Stock guru,” you say?

That’s like me going to the park and shooting a whole whack of small children with an AK-47, then calling myself “child-care specialist.”

At the moment, I’m trying to advise my sister, among many other clients, how they should proceed forward in the real estate market as we dodge speculation about a possible market correction or downturn in the Canadian economy.

My job does not come without pressure, and before I advise people on where the market is headed, I usually take out my crystal ball and give it a good polish with Windex, before peering into it and clearly seeing the future.

I can only tell people what I think and what I know, and while many Realtors sit on the fence and pass the buck on to their clients (probably so they can say “I never told you that” later on down the road), I stand by my assessments, opinions, and advice.

This brings us to Jim Cramer, who is essentially the Dr. Phil of investing for a generation of American’s who need a bald, loud, annoying man to state simple information that they can easily obtain through many other mediums.  Although, I will say that at least Jim Cramer has money to back up his claims, while Dr. Phil is fat and should probably see a doctor about his weight problem…

Jim Cramer hosts CNBC’s Mad Money, and is known for his rapid-fire opinions on stocks suggested by callers.  Cramer is also known for his over-the-top antics such as throwing tantrums, throwing chairs, and throwing copies of his latest book at the camera!

On March 11th, 2008, an emailer asked Jim Cramer about Bear Stearns, which we have heard quite a bit about in the news lately.  An emailer named “Peter” asked, “Should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there?”

Cramer’s response?

“NO, NO, NO!”

Yeah, seriously.  Word for word.  It’s kind of hard to make any claims to the contrary down the road when you say something as definitive as “NO, NO, NO!”  He then added these gems:

“Bear Stearns is fine, do not take your money out…”

“Bear Stearns is not in trouble!”

“Do not move your money from Bear!”

“That’s just being SILLY!”

On March 16th, 2008, Bear Stearns’ stock dropped a whopping 90% in one single day.

On that day, Bear Stearns signed a merger agreement with JP Morgan Chase in a stock swap worth $2.00 per share.  At the time Jim Cramer said “NO, NO, NO,” the stock was trading at $67.82 per share.

There hasn’t been such a catostrophic decline in a stocks value since the days of the tech bubble-burst in 2000.

The fallout from the collapse of Bear Stearns is nothing less than extraordinary.  The media has feasted on the story, while the implications for the economy of the United States as a whole are quite obvious.

Oh Jim……Jimmy Boy….

Mr. Cramer!  What the hell have you done?

Well, Jim Cramer didn’t have anything to do with the collapse of one of the largest global investment banks in the world, but he didadvise the naive, uneducated, easily-influenced public that there is “nothing wrong with Bear Stearns.”  And who are the public to argue?

The man is an EXPERT!

He is a self-professed STOCK GURU!

He went to HARVARD!

I’m sure Dr. Phil has a prestigious degree as well, perhaps from Jenny Craig College, University of Ice Cream, or Balding A & M, but Dr. Phil probably never went on TV and told a battered wife, “Don’t worry baby-doll, just go home to your husband, get him nice and drunk, put a knife in his hand, and then tell him you slept with his brother!”

Only months after George W. Bush gave each household in America a whopping $600 to “increase consumer spending,” a man goes on television, preaches his “expert advice” and loses those same households BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars!

Geez, and I thought it was tough when my clients said to me, “So where do you see the real estate market in five years?”

Imagine me standing in front of 146 Blaven Road, while a wrecking ball hovers above the house and an engineer simultaneously prepares to detonate several bricks of TNT inside the home, and me saying “NO, NO,NO! Blaven Road is fine!  Blaven Road is NOT in trouble!  That’s just silly!”

I’m not an expert, nor do I profess to be one.

I haven’t written any books, and I don’t throw chairs…..often…

But I’m thankful for two things:

-I don’t have my own television show where I give cut-throat real estate advice.

-I have never owned any of Bear Stearns’ stock…