Not Exactly the Head of the Class

Here's a tough quiz: Who is more of a deer in the headlights?

1. Dick Fuld of Lehman (LEH - commentary - Cramer's Take)
2. Robert Willumstad of AIG (AIG - commentary - Cramer's Take)
3. Vikram Pandit of Citigroup (C - commentary - Cramer's Take)

This is an astounding trio of people sitting around and waiting as their stocks just get torched. They are all either in "hope" or "denial" mode. Maybe they are just paralyzed.

They had that great window of opportunity when the SEC went on its anti-manipulation rampage, but now that the SEC has gone pro-manipulation, you have three free-fire zones.

Fuld's become useless, a guy who thinks that all is well. That has to be it, otherwise he would have acted 30 points ago. He seems dazed.

Pandit? He's obviously a debater. Where did they get this guy? Is he convening focus groups or something?

But it is Willumstad that I feel the worst about. AIG's Financial Products group used very sophisticated models to assess the risk to the insurance they gave to creators of CDOs. The models showed that there was a one-in-a-gazillion chance that they would owe even a couple of smackers. Where are those professors who vetted this? Where are the risk officers? Where is the endless procession of people who said they kicked every single tire before writing the policies?

Obviously the models were completely and utterly wrong. I think that Willumstad doesn't know what he's insuring. Nobody there can tell him.

Given that he can't even quantify what the heck he owns, he's in a really hard place. Plus, they recently increased the dividend. Hello?!

I think all three of these stocks are awful. But the toughest turn might be Willumstad's. He has no one to help him value billions of dollars in contracts.

He's up Financial Products, without a paddle.

At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

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