Bluth Company
Encyclopedia
The Bluth Company, founded by George Bluth Sr., is a fictional company in the television series Arrested Development. As of the end of the series, the company was labeled as a Risky stock by Jim Cramer of Mad Money
Mad Money
Mad Money is an American finance television program hosted by Jim Cramer that began airing on CNBC on March 14, 2005. Its main focus is investment and speculation, particularly in publicly traded stocks...

.

The Bluth Company is a real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

 development firm. The chief executive officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...

 was George Sr. At his retirement party, he announced that his wife, Lucille Bluth, would be the new CEO of the company, surprising his son Michael Bluth, who had expected to take his father's place as head of the company. Just after this announcement, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission boarded the boat upon which the party was being held and arrested George for defrauding customers and spending the company's money on "personal expenses." (His family, with the exception of Michael, was also using the company's money for personal expenses). Lucille places her favored son Byron "Buster" Bluth in charge of managing the company, but he soon shows himself to be completely incompetent, and the family asks the departing Michael to return and act as CEO. Most of the action in the series comes from Michael's futile attempts to try to get the company back on track, while the family continues to take money from it, and hide their activities.

At the end of the first season, it is revealed that the company is suspected of illegally building homes in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

 for Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

. A mysterious box of evidence emerges, labeled "H. Maddas" ("Saddam H." backwards). George Sr. is to be charged with "light treason".

The Bluth company has also owned and run a frozen banana stand started by George Sr. in 1963 on the Newport Beach boardwalk on Balboa Island
Balboa Island, Newport Beach, California
Balboa Island is an area of Newport Beach, California, actually comprising three modified or artificial islands in Newport Harbor: Balboa Island , the largest; the smaller Little Balboa Island to the east of Balboa Island, joined by a two-lane bridge; and the smallest Collins Island to the...

. The stand was a popular meeting place for the buying and selling of marijuana
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...

 in the 1970s. As the stand itself was built to resemble a large yellow banana, it was commonly known as "the big yellow joint
Joint (cannabis)
Joint is a slang term for a cigarette rolled using cannabis. Rolling papers are the most common rolling medium among industrialized countries, however brown paper, cigarettes with the tobacco removed, and newspaper are commonly used in developing countries. Modern papers are now made from a wide...

", and became the topic of a hit song by the same name (which was a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 of Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Davy Guthrie is an American folk singer. Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice...

's "Alice's Restaurant
Alice's Restaurant
"Alice's Restaurant Massacree" is a musical monologue by singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie released on his 1967 album Alice's Restaurant. The song is one of Guthrie's most prominent works, based on a true incident in his life that began on Thanksgiving Day 1965, and which inspired a 1969 movie of the...

"). George Sr. had initially lined the walls of the banana stand with money. As the Bluth Company was struggling, George Sr. repeatedly assured to Michael, "there's always money in the banana stand." Weary of his father's constant involvement in the business, Michael burned the stand down in a moment of protest, not realizing that the statement was meant to be taken literally; there were $250,000 contained in the walls of the banana stand. Throughout the series, the banana stand gets destroyed and rebuilt several times.

During the series, Jim Cramer of the hit CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...

 show Mad Money
Mad Money
Mad Money is an American finance television program hosted by Jim Cramer that began airing on CNBC on March 14, 2005. Its main focus is investment and speculation, particularly in publicly traded stocks...

appeared to discuss the recovery of the Bluth Company's stock
Stock
The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...

. He appeared to first announce that he had upgraded Bluth Company stock to a "Don't Buy" from a "Triple Sell", and then to say that the stock was not a "Don't Buy" anymore, but a "Risky". Each upgrade
Upgrade
The term upgrade refers to the replacement of a product with a newer version of the same product. It is most often used in computing and consumer electronics, generally meaning a replacement of hardware, software or firmware with a newer or better version, in order to bring the system up to date...

signified a step in the right direction for Michael as he rebuilt the company's image, but also led to his family trying to sell their shares for immediate monetary gain. The upgrades were also shown to be brief moments of celebration for Michael and George Michael, as well as the firm's employees. During the final episode, when Cramer upgraded the stock to "Risky", the employees of the Bluth Company put up signs that read "Risky Business" in the office.
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