The bull is back- here’s the Cramer that we’ve come to know. He says yesterday we tested the bottom. I’m thinking we’re closer to the chin:
Doomers, care to weigh in on where we are in the market slide? [And please keep it "family friendly" for those of us who like to think we're still young and impressionable.] 
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Well he’s definitley entertaining. I’m sure he was that kid that would jump out of the boat in the middle of a 50 foot deep lake and come up yelling “I TOUCHED THE BOTTOM!!!” He’s good for a laugh when I’m havin a bad day though.
I think we’re a little further down than the chin. Given the bleak jobs reports over the last several months, the repeated multi-billion dollar write downs of the investment banks, I’d say we’re currently stuck in the soft, fleshy part of the throat, and what we’re seeing from Crazy Cramer is a gag reflex blended with a heady dose of denial (“No! I can NOT be choking!”).
twist -
Equities are irrelevant. It’s the debt markets that are going to drive World Depression II for the next 10 to 15 years.
I liked that part where Cramer explained why the little guy need not panic when the Dow goes below 12k again in a few days. What he’s doing is providing interference so that the big guys he’s acting for can dump and leave the little guys holding the bag. Cramer is doing what he is paid to do and the Dow will be below 10k in a few weeks, but it doesn’t really matter.
The real game is hiding the big debt losses with Fannie and Freddie for just one more year so that it’s Hillary and not George who gets to be Herbert Hoover.
John-
As you and Jan Martin have already pointed out, the problems at F&F are already getting harder to hide. I’ll be real surprised if they can hide this elephant until the change in the administration.
I’m assuming all the candidates are nuts at this point. I agree completely that the winner will be considered the Hoover of our time- they are being handed the “No Win Scenario.”
[Igor says "deceit"]
The Bush Tax cuts really should be made permanent. Just look what they’ve done for the economy
I think Dubya and Darth Cheney will be considered the Hoover of our times. But they’ll make Hoover look like a piker by comparison. The question is who will be the FDR this time around. I just see a bunch of midgets and corporate lackeys running. I think Edwards might have what it takes, but even that’s a mighty long longshot.
It seems like the R’s will get most of the blame for this mess, so I would think they would try to advance a stimulus package aimed at the poor, who will at least spend the money. I guess Kool-Aid is not brain food after all. It’s even more incredible that the Dems should have them over a barrel, and yet they are still caving into giving handouts to the rascals that got us into this mess.
All of a sudden I’m getting tons of junk mail offering to refinance my mortage (12 years left on a 15 year mortgage). I’m waiting for mortgage interest rates of 3 or 4%. If my house doesn’t sell by June I might refi with a 30 year. With inflation and tax deductions, it would be like they were paying me to borrow money. But I have a feeling by June all h*** will have broken loose.
[Slight edit- t.]
Cramer’s made a bottom out of himself!
tc,
even if the FFR were at 0%, mortgage rate will never be at 4% or lower. when the FFR was at 1%, the lowest mortgage rates got to were around 5.25-5.5%.
banks will not make a loan that they know they’re guaranteed to lose on after inflation & 15-30 yrs of time.
I don’t really think Cramer is this stupid to believe it’s a bottom. I think his real audience are the people on Wall Street & his aim is to make them happy. so he calls it a bottom bc they’re hoping they prop it up long enough for people to start spending again & save all their butts.
doubt it.
I feel left out. I’m not getting any refinance offers. Could it be because I signed up for…
https://www.optoutprescreen.com
BTW, I highly recommend this service. When it comes to credit cards and other unwanted offers in my mailbox, it’s like the faucet has been shut off.
twist -
Things are going completely bonkers this week. I see that the US dollar was down over a cent and a half against the loonie at lunchtime. Meanwhile, people are blaming the whole package of Fed panic and market gyrations since Monday on a single missing low level French trader named Jerome. Seriously
Wake me up when anything starts making sense. I’m heading back to the 17th Century.
Cramer just sticks his finger in the wind every day to see which way the wind blows. He’s reactionary by design of his corporate masters. He has to at least acknowledge the bad days Then when its an up one its all BULLYA!
I agree with John M. The Market is irrelevant in regard to the route cause in the debt markets. But it is very relevant as a barometer and physcological motivator of the ecomomy as a whole. The situation is still very opaque and the stock markets will rise and fall on pure emotion, rumor, and events as it always has. Sooner or later reality will have to be faced and there will be capitulation and a real bottom. Where and when that is is anybody’s guess. The powers that be will try to manage this down.
I think we’ll see a real bottom before summer, maybe sooner. But then that might be a leveling off before more blood later this year. Just a guess.
John-
I understand about the 17th century…
You should see my office. It contains the usual equipment- I’ve got the laptop, PDA, printer, etc., but I also have a large loom that dates from the 1790s, [Yes it works.] a quilting frame and my spinning wheel. Low tech is my sanity break.
I like it when the power goes out- some days, it’s better that way.
twist -
I believe the Jerome Kerviel affair is the third time I’ve seen this movie. The second time was Robert Tappan Morris in 1988, and the first (and best) time was this:
John M,
Hilarious, and appropriate. It is sad that in reality we have no wise old wizard to save the day, but we’ve sure got a mountain of Mickey Mouse wantabees.
The real game is hiding the big debt losses with Fannie and Freddie for just one more year so that it’s Hillary and not George who gets to be Herbert Hoover.
For the past few years we’ve talked about how banks and regulators are bumbling idiots. Now, suddenly there’s the perfect organization of a new “vast right wing conspiracy against Hillary”? I don’t think you can have that both ways.
John M.
I read about your buddy Jerome today. Isn’t he the 30 year old French scamster that’s taken the commodities markets for over 7 billion. They said the idiot did’nt even profit from his solo fraud because of illogical trading. I’d like to know more about this breach in security and how he was able to make trade of that magnitude.
Brucewho-
Kerviel wasn’t the only idiot- SocGen didn’t even call the police right away. The Telegraph gives one of the better accounts I’ve seen.
So this joker gets nailed, if they find him after fleeing the country, and they will find him. But our finacial institutions also lose billions and the CEO’s get multimillion dollar golden parachures. Where’s the justice?
Brucewho-
Kerviel was guilty of what he did to SocGen, but Bernanke and company are the ones guilty of the stupidity this week:
It sounds like Keystone Cops.
sandman (#16) -
Of course I can have it both ways — I’m Canadian
Actually it’s the confounded bipartisan Manichaeism running amok in America that is blinding you to the real risks that are about to overwhelm you.
Take Doom’s old friend Bill Maloni, a retired senior Fannie Mae lobbyist. He thinks that OFHEO (headed by good ole boy Bush buddy Jim Lockhart), AEI Fellows like Alex Pollock and Reagan intimate and biographer Peter Wallison and St Louis Fed President Bill (The Butcher) Poole constitute a vast right-wing conspiracy dedicated to frustrating Fannie’s desire to promote the American Dream and do good stuff for the economy. And this simply because Fannie has historically been a power base for key Democratic Party figures like former Clinton OMG head Frank Raines. Wrong! They want to rein in the big GSEs simply because they are a source of systemic risk large enough to constitute an immediate existential threat to the Republic.
Similarly, Matt Simmons’ warnings about peak oil, and specifically about the imminent exhaustion of the key fields in north-east Arabia are discounted as the rantings of a Bush family intimate and key Texas petroleum industry player merely promoting his own agenda. And Paul Krugman’s detailed warnings of impending economic crisis are dismissed as an on-going effort to promote Democratic Party electability in the short term.
The two acceptable US political parties are nearly indistinguishable, but the noise and friction they generate competing for power (and especially control of the now nearly dictatorial federal Executive Branch) are blinding Americans to the actual risks they should be (and presently aren’t) confronting.
Twist,
Well they caught the guy but the more I read about it the more I wonder if perhaps the dude is a scape goat for something else happening at the bank.
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/police-question-french-bank-trader/n20080126141909990019
It flies in the face of logic that one guy could do this for so long and not get caught. In this world you can’t always believe everything you read or hear or even see. Lots of deception everywhere.