Cramer Attacks Congressmen For Holding Up Sirius & XM Merger (XMSR, SIRI)

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Jim Cramer came back from vacation and on CNBC’s MAD MONEY, he slammed Congress for taking more than a year now for holding up the Sirius Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) and XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: XMSR).

He wants to know why the deal is being held up, and he is blaming conflicted Congressmen that are getting donations and pressure from lobbyists.  Jim Cramer said the National Association of Broadcaster spent more than$4 million in lobbying to block this deal.  He even named the "lobbyingoffenders" that are out to block this: Gene Green, LouiseSlaughter, John Spratt, Roy Blunt, and Tom Cole (forgive any spelling errors on the names) were all among the onesthat Cramer bashed for protecting their campaign contributors.

a673b.bigscoots-temp.com will tell you ourselves that it is about ten-times more than obvious that the National Association of Broadcasters pushing their "in-pocket Congressman" that land-base (terrestrial) radio has been lobbying to block this.Mark our words….. If they block this merger, traditional/terrestrial radio won’t do any better.  But they will effectively put at least one of these out of business as far as they exist today. 

Cramer noted OpenSecrets.com and campaignmoney.com as sources for you to look these up.  He said these Congressmen are what are keeping this from being approved.

Jon C. Ogg
February 25, 2008

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Featured Reads

Our top personal finance-related articles today. Your wallet will thank you later.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618