The latest stock jock to retake the field is Thom Calandra, the founding editor of MarketWatch, a financial-news site now owned by News Corp. He has launched a new investment newsletter, Ticker Trax, on Stockhouse.com. A gutsy move, considering that's exactly the vehicle which crashed his career at MarketWatch; an SEC investigation found that Calandra was buying shares of stocks he recommended before he wrote them up in a MarketWatch newsletter, and then selling them after publication. He surrendered $416,109.58 in illegal profits, and paid a $125,000 fine. As part of the settlement,

Calandra joins Henry Blodget, who was banned from the securities industry for privately trash-talking stocks, but now runs Silicon Alley Insider, a tech-stocks blog. He's been profiled in Wired and explaining Wall Street's woes in The Atlantic. CNBC shouter Jim Cramer draws higher ratings than ever for his populist on-air rants. As a money manager, he was investigated by the SEC and cleared, but later admitted to manipulating stocks. Nevertheless, he's now nominating himself as the SEC's next chairman.

So why are we taking advice from admitted crooks? I think we all cynically subscribe to the theory that it takes a thief to catch one. The mortgage meltdown revealed abuses at Wall Street firms that encompassed the entire business; it wasn't a matter of bad apples, but a rotten barrel. If the game is rigged, then who better to guide your play than the most expert of riggers?

Cramer on the economy:

There are two kinds of companies right now. Those that need oil and capital and those that don't. I'm bullish on those that don't and those that produce raw materials.

On media:

My kids don't know what Newsweek is. Newsweek should be Kaplan [the educational-testing business, owned, like Newsweek, by the Washington Post Company)].

Rupert Murdoch is going to be Sam Zell and see what the Wall Street Journal can do on the Internet. With maybe half the journalists.

(Cramer's referring to Zell's ill-time purchase of newspaper publisher Tribune.)

On politics:

There's a movie coming out this summer, Get Smart. In the old show, Control battled against the evil Chaos. Lately, it's felt like Chaos has been running things.

On Microsoft-Yahoo:

Microsoft has to buy Yahoo because Google is going to give away the OS for search queries. Icahn will force the deal. Yang and his allies only own about 9 percent of the company. The Bancroft family owned 60 percent of the Journal and that didn't stop progress.

As Silicon Alley Insider points out, both parties have much to lose. Cramer still owns 14 percent of the company, a stake worth around $42 million. CNBC, where Cramer yells a lot on air, has less of a Web audience than TheStreet.com. And try this pop quiz: Name someone who writes for TheStreet.com besides Cramer.

Google continues its dominance and becomes one of the top three companies in the U.S. in market capitalization. It doubles its advertising share, at the expense of television and print. It also successfully challenges Microsoft for operating-system dominance. Microsoft calls for a government investigation of Google's power, but no one cares because Microsoft is just too hated for anyone in Washington to champion. The stock roars to $1,000.

And devoting so much space to Microsoft and operating systems just shows that Cramer doesn't really understand Google at all. Sure, Microsoft made a half-hearted effort to complain about the DoubleClick deal, but didn't have much to stand on. Google is far from an advertising monopoly. And what does any of this have to do with operating systems?

Cramer missed the one area where Google is actually competing with Microsoft: In Google Apps, which is trying to take down Microsoft Office, and mostly failing. Jim, you should have stopped at "GOOG goes up." It's not much of a prediction, but at least it makes sense.