Beware Bears' Negative Subprime Spin

Subprime liars everywhere! Stan O'Neal at Merrill (MER - commentary - Cramer's Take) claims it is contained. What does he know?!? What kind of fools does he take us for?!? Or how about Bear (BSC - commentary - Cramer's Take) putting in Tommy Marano to run the broken High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund. That's a sign of desperation. The mortgage sky is indeed falling!

There's so much grist every day for the bears' mill, it's almost comical that they've tried to turn these two news items into twisted negatives that tell you how desperate everyone is. (The Wall Street Journal loves this story, finding new subprime holes in London. Wait until you read how bad it is in Kuala Lumpur!)

At the risk of, once again, attempting to inject truth and calm into a debate sorely demanding panic and fear and, of course, dissembling to keep it all going: If you were Bear Stearns, would you leave Ralph Cioffi in charge of the new money you'd just injected? I would be shorting the heck out of Bear if it did. That would be the most irresponsible thing you could do. It is true that it is awfully hard to lose a job on Wall Street, but every now and then someone is punished and someone smarter and better is brought in. That's what Bear did. Sign of desperation? How about a sign of intelligent life?

Now, how about this Merrill statement? Have any of the bears who are so quick to turn this man's words into posturing done any serious work on the tenure of O'Neal? This guy never speaks, and when he does, he means it. It would be so easy for him to dodge the question of subprime or to simply say nothing. But he spoke up.

Was it wrong and Pollyanna-ish of the man? How about being right and correct? Why can't we ever respect these people enough to think they are telling the truth? Maybe I worked for and with these kinds of folks too long, but I always found that when it comes to the markets they dominate, they never make pronouncements that come back to haunt them. They are too cautious and too public for that.

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