Here we go again -- another market day that feels more like the latest heart-stopping roller coaster, starting off with a big rally at the opening following Cramer fave Hewlett-Packard's great quarterly numbers. But mid-day, the market drops like a rock, down 372. Finally, in the last hour of trading, we get another "jacked-up happy ending." How are you supposed to be a calm and cool investor in times like these? Well, last night, Cramer talked about how good things can still happen in tough circumstances: namely, his number one Wall-of-Shamer, Jerry Yang, announced he was stepping down as Yahoo CEO, where "he's been like a value wrecking ball."
Because of that news, Yahoo was up 8.6% Tuesday from its close at $10.63 on Monday. Even better: Cramer thinks with Yang out of the way, a deal with Microsoft could still happen, with Carl Icahn and Steve Ballmer working it out.
But with Yang gone, who can replace him at the dubious top of the ol' Wall of Shame? Well, here's a name: Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup . Or as Cramer calls him, the "most under-performing, value-destroying burden to shareholders of a CEO out there." Ouch.
This hasn't always been the case. Cramer's been trying to give Vikram a chance for a while, ever since he took over the reigns from "Chuck the clown Prince, former wall of shamer himself." It was a tough job to clean up Prince's messes, so a little leeway was given Vikram. But it's almost been a year, and all he's done is "show us that he is indeed the true successor to Chuck Prince in all the worst ways."
From the time Vikram came on, we've watched Citi stock drop from $33.23 to $8.36, a 74.8% free-fall. During the SEC's ban on short-selling, Vikram could have delivered an equity offering to raise cash for the company. But the "complacent chief" has only done one equity offering during his tenure. Cramer also thinks he might be slightly delusional, presenting Citigroup as "well capitalized" when reports indicate the company is "highly leveraged and investors remain worried about capital."
Even after a $25B injection from the Treasury, Citigroup is an "unbelievable" single-digit stock! His tenure has also seen four straight quarters of "enormous losses" and "tens of billions of dollars worth of write-downs" over the period of 11 months, including a $9.83B loss in 2007 Q4, a net loss of $5.1B in 2008 Q1 and another $2.5B loss in 2008 Q2. "Does he think, perhaps, that losses are good things?" wonders Cramer.
Bottom line: "Funny, Citigroup under Vikram Pandit looks a lot like Citigroup under Chuck Prince, and that's why Pandit is the latest member of the Mad Money Wall of Shame. Let's hope he pulls a Jerry Yang and quits, causing Citi's stock to rally substantially."
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