Jim Cramer: "The Uber-Genius Tour" apparently rolled through Kenilworth's virtual-environs again, tonight (you'll recall what happened the last time this particular snake-oil salesman came through town). Jim's is a highly-comical mess of internally-contradictory jargon -- on the one hand, he cannot afford to too-greatly offend his backyard-neighbor, Schering CEO Fred Hassan -- while on the other, he can no longer ignore that the New York Times is -- day by day -- speaking the truth -- to power, and prevailing -- in that tenuous dialogue:
. . . .Hey Cramer: I know you have liked Schering-Plough in the past, but not now. As a physician, I have dealt with this company and their products for many years. From personal experience, their management and product promotion on the clinical side has been poor. They will announce layoffs next week. I expect more fallout from the Vytorin problem and I think this company is in trouble. What do you think?
-- Peter
Cramer says: "I felt that a lot of the press [made it] too hard to own this stock.Because the I think that the New York Times is doing some dynamite reporting on Vytorin, but you’re not going to find out anything good. . . .
Fred Hassan is a great CEO. I disagree with you, Peter, about the company’s longer-term prospects because I think Fred Hassan’s doing a lot of great stuff. But shorter term the pain from Vytorin articles is too great" and the stock’s down even though the rest of its peers are up. . . .
The Questioner, "Peter", apparently a physician -- who speaks from his personal experience -- dealing with pharma-reps, day-in and day-out -- characterizes Schering's management and product promotion as "poor". And still Cramer tells him he is wrong.
Cramer blames Schering's woes on the press (WHAT?!), then -- in the next breath, in fact -- praises the New York Times' coverage of Schering, and Vytorin.
I think Jim can't decide whether to believe. . . himself -- or himself.
The one thing Cramer does "get right" is that any really good news cannot reasonably be expected from Schering -- at least, not any time soon.
2 comments:
Condor,
I wonder....maybe the word 'dynamite' wasn't a positive (?). Perhaps it was just used to describe the effect it was having.
Just a thought.
I hear you -- but I do think Cramer respects the NYT guy. I think he's feeling the dissonance of his blindly diastarous earlier pumping of Schering. But you might be right -- I dunno.
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