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Economist rips CNBC host

By ASSOCIATED PRESS | Thursday, April 9, 2009

TORONTO (AP) | CNBC's Jim Cramer has another feud on his hands.

Just weeks after "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart took Mr. Cramer to task for trying to turn finance reporting into a "game," famous bear economist Nouriel Roubini criticized Mr. Cramer on Tuesday for predicting bull markets.

"Cramer is a buffoon," said Mr. Roubini, a New York University economics professor often called Dr. Doom. "He was one of those who called six times in a row for this bear market rally to be a bull market rally and he got it wrong. And after all this mess and Jon Stewart he should just shut up because he has no shame."

Mr. Roubini made the comments before appearing with bank analyst Meredith Whitney and Canadian bears Ian Gordon and Eric Sprott at a Toronto event titled "A Night with the Bears."

Mr. Cramer, the host of CNBC's "Mad Money" show, recently wrote in a blog that Mr. Roubini is "intoxicated" with his own "prescience and vision" and said Mr. Roubini should realize that things are better since the stock market's bottom in early March.

Standard & Poor's 500 index has rallied 17 percent since then.

"He's not a credible analyst. Every time it was a bear market rally he said it was the beginning of a bull and he got it wrong," Mr. Roubini said in an interview with the Associated Press.