What he really meant to say was…

Conrad De Aenlle of The New York Times writes Sunday that CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer says he was misunderstood when he responded to a viewer’s question about Bear Stearns.

De Aenlle wrote, “In a March 11 broadcast, viewed tens of thousands of times on YouTube and parsed by satirists like Jon Stewart, Mr. Cramer told a viewer who asked whether he should remove money from Bear: ‘No, no, no! Bear Stearns is fine. Bear Stearns is not in trouble.’ He then advised: ‘Don’t move your money from Bear. That’s just being silly.’

“Late last week, Mr. Cramer said in an interview that he was referring to assets in Bear Stearns brokerage accounts, not the stock.

“On the contrary, he said, he later made ‘an unbelievable call’ that the stock would end up worthless. A transcript of a broadcast on March 14 has him panning the stock, although he did not say unequivocally that it would fall close to zero. As for his earlier assessment that Bear Stearns was not in trouble, well, that was somewhat off the mark.”

Read more here.