Is Cramer a market manipulator?

Whether he now uses his Mad Money show on General Electric's (NYSE: GE) CNBC to manipulate stock prices is an open question. But according to News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) New York Post, Jim Cramer admitted that he used to manipulate stock prices when he was running his $450 million hedge fund, Cramer Berkowitz.

The Post reports on a video from TheStreet.com's (NASDAQ: TSCM) "Wall Street Confidential" Webcast -- now available on Google, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube -- in which Cramer boasts about manipulating the price of a high-flying stock down, and even acknowledges that doing so might have been illegal.

How so? "A lot of times when I was short, I would create a level of activity beforehand that would drive the futures. . . . It's a fun game," Cramer said in the Webcast. Cramer in the Webcast shared his "tips" on how to drive a stock price down so that a short-position -- a bet that a stock price would drop -- remains profitable. He added that the strategy -- while illegal -- was safe enough because, "the Securities and Exchange Commission never understands this."

I doubt the SEC is thrilled with Cramer just now. News Corp., which plans to compete with CNBC, may be thrilled by this chance to damage Cramer. But how does it make you feel about him?

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns GE shares and has no financial interest in Google, News Corp., or TheStreet.com.