Jim Cramer playing hardball with theStreet.com?

Eric Savitz is all over this story at Barrons.com . TheStreet.com (TSCM) shares are down again today with a 2 day loss of 14%.  The reason? The status of contract negotiations with co-founder Jim Cramer.

Yesterday, the company reported Q4 results right in line with analyst expectations. On its conference call, the company repeated its policy of not giving specific financial guidance, other than to say it expects net margins and gross adjusted EBITDA in 2008 will be higher than in 2007. Shares of TSCM are now trading near the 52-week low, just 20 cents away from a new bottom.

TheStreet did acknowledge that it could be affected by a weakening economy. “As we all know, the economic environment has grown more challenging over the past few months, and there is great uncertainty as to how weak economic conditions might become and the impact this might have on our advertisers, subscribers and visitors to our network of sites,” CFO Eric Ashman said on the call.

Chairman and CEO Tom Clarke talked about the status of negotiations of a new employment agreement between the company and Jim Cramer. Clarke noted on the call that the agreement scheduled to expire December 31, 2007 was extended on the same terms through February 15, 2008. One day before that, on February 14, the agreement was extended once more on the same terms, this time through April 15. It's no secret, Cramer is theStreet.com main star attraction and his 6.4% stake in the company makes him a big asset.

So is Cramer pulling a A-Rod?  Time will tell, but as Eric points out, as the AP is reporting, Cramer recently sold 30,000 shares of the company under a pre-aranged trading plan.

Have fun playing TSCM shares, if Jim doesn't comeback, we'll see $5 a share overnight.

The Author does not hold any positions in TSCM.