Cramer: How Hedge Funds Make Their Money, The Old Fashioned Way...

Watch straight-talking Jim Cramer in an interview where he explained how Wall Street controls the media and the market to manipulate retail investors and profit from their own concoctions. CNBC has been trying to remove this clip from the web.

This is the famous 2006 interview from TheStreet.com's "Wall Street Confidential" webcast which stirred controversy after it appeared on YouTube.com. In the video, Cramer described activities used by hedge fund managers to manipulate stock prices; some illegal and some debatably legal. He described how he could push stocks higher or lower with as little as $5 million in capital when he was running his hedge fund.

Cramer said, "A lot of times when I was short, I would create a level of activity beforehand that would drive the futures." He also encouraged hedge funds to engage in this type of activity because it is "a very quick way to make money." Cramer claimed that everything he did was legal, but that illegal activity is common in the hedge fund industry. He also stated that some hedge fund managers spread false rumors to drive a stock down: " ...it's important to create a new truth, to develop a fiction."

Cramer said one strategy to keep a stock price down is to spread negative rumors to reporters he described as "the Pisanis of the world". "You have to use these guys," said Cramer. He also discussed getting "the bozo reporter from The Wall Street Journal" to publish a negative article. Cramer said this practice, although illegal, is easy to do "because the SEC doesn't understand it."

James J. "Jim" Cramer is an American television personality, former hedge fund manager, and best-selling author. He is the host of CNBC's "Mad Money" and co-founder of TheStreet.com. Cramer has also been a contributor to New York magazine, and an occasional contributor to Time magazine.

Cramer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1977 where he was also president of the Harvard Crimson. He later earned a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School.