Confessions of a Street Addict, by James J. Cramer. Simon & Schuster. 339 pages. $26.

James J. Cramer is a poster child for the power and peril of modern market capitalism.

Smart, profane and tireless, he rose from a lower-middle-class childhood in a Philadelphia suburb to make very large profits for himself and the customers of his Wall Street hedge fund.

Along the way, he acknowledges, he smashed telephones and computers, abused his co-workers, betrayed friends and continued to trade stocks while his mother lay dying and his wife gave birth to their first child.

And while fiercely defending his personal honor, he candidly acknowledges profiting in the markets by playing games with corporate information that observers less sophisticated in the ways of Wall Street might consider unethical if not illegal.

Cramer tells his story well in Confessions of a Street Addict. He's a very good writer and breathtakingly candid about his many faults.

At the same time, he's a relentless advocate of a dangerous attitude toward markets, trading and business on Wall Street that that has victimized countless ordinary investors in recent years and threatens to undermine market institutions that are vital to capitalism's success.

Americans depend on honest markets to help finance their homes, retirements and other dreams. Businesses depend on them to fuel the engines of capitalism. Our markets are the envy of the world - a precious national resource.

But in recent years Wall Street operators and corporate financiers have jobbed the system - aided and abetted by supposedly independent public accountants and securities analysts - leaving many victims and weakening public trust.

Cramer pays lip service to honest markets. He describes himself as scrupulously honorable - "the proverbial Boy Scout." But at the same time, he tells story after story that spotlight the unfair games that insiders relentlessly play.

When Cramer started his hedge fund fueled with millions from fat cat investors encouraged by Martin Peretz, owner of The New Republic and a market manic himself, he promised to return the money if the value of the fund fell more than 10 percent.

Within a few weeks, the fund's value had dropped close to that trigger point and Cramer was near panic. Then a smart day trader named Karen Backfisch offered him a critical piece of advice - stop trading based on the opinions of Goldman Sachs analysts and start trading on information no one else has.

Cramer took the advice, married Backfisch, whom he nicknamed "the trading goddess" and never looked back.

The game Backfisch taught him was simple. He spread his trading business broadly among Wall Street brokerage firms. Grateful for the commissions, analysts at these firms would return his calls inquiring about the outlook for likely stocks. When analysts told him they were inclined to change to a more positive attitude toward a particular stock, Cramer took a strong position in that stock and then spread the good news. When the stock's value moved up, he would sell and pocket the profits.

Cramer is not alone. Every day, up and down Wall Street, traders, analysts and corporate executives are spreading the good and bad news about stocks and then taking quick profits when less sophisticated investors react.

But ordinary investors and even some regulators are beginning to wise up.

Meanwhile, the regulators and even some Wall Street executives are talking about taking some tough steps to rebuild market credibility. And Fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently chided corporations for failing to report the true costs of spectacularly generous executive stock options.

Cramer, a co-founder of TheStreet.com and a frequent guest on a succession of radio and television investment shows, no longer manages the hedge fund he founded but he's still trading. A note attached to his latest advice column for investors on TheStreet.com offers readers the opportunity not only to see his personal portfolio but to "find out what trades Cramer will make before he makes them" If his readers act on that information, Cramer is more certain to profit than they are.

And so it goes.

Larry Williams was for 12 years business editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. He then was managing editor of the Akron Beacon-Journal from 1984 to 1987, news editor of the Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau from 1987 to 1998, and from 1998 through 1999, Washington Bureau chief for The Detroit News. He currently is an editor at The Sun.