Jim Cramer says there will be no "Great Depression" II

[CoffeeCat]

Well, well...still licking his wounds after his shame festival with John Stewart--Jim
Cramer stops screaming long enough to declare that "a 'Great Depression' II is
Off the Table."

Oh. I'm so relieved. Really. No really. :eyes:

From Cramer's latest article at www.thestreet.com:

"The drumbeat is picking up. Production decline is slowing down as we see a small rebound in rail traffic and an end to inventory builds. There is a nice housing starts number this morning, the strongest jump since 1990, which was forecasted by a small bump in the stocks of Lennar (LEN Quote - Cramer on LEN - Stock Picks), Toll Brothers (TOL Quote - Cramer on TOL - Stock Picks) and KB Homes (KBH Quote - Cramer on KBH - Stock Picks). Huge increase in multifamily units.

Retail sales were up more than expected in February, hence the upgrades in Home Depot (HD Quote - Cramer on HD - Stock Picks), Best Buy (BBY Quote - Cramer on BBY - Stock Picks) and Target (TGT Quote - Cramer on TGT - Stock Picks) by Jefferies. Unemployment claims are not getting worse.

Commodities are rising: Witness the run in copper, manifested by Freeport McMoRan (FCX Quote - Cramer on FCX - Stock Picks), and the run in oil, signaled by the bottoms in Chevron (CVX Quote - Cramer on CVX - Stock Picks) and Transocean (RIG Quote - Cramer on RIG - Stock Picks). Bank profits are on the upswing, which is why Bank of America (BAC Quote - Cramer on BAC - Stock Picks), Citigroup (C Quote - Cramer on C - Stock Picks), Wells Fargo (WFC Quote - Cramer on WFC - Stock Picks) and General Electric (GE Quote - Cramer on GE - Stock Picks) are bottoming.

Therefore, the bottom is in. The economy bottomed last month and we are now going to go up. The rally is the logical extension of the bottom and the bottom will become obvious to all shortly. The stimulus is kicking in, lending is picking up, mergers and acquisitions are back and the TALF plan is upon us.

Is it right? Is it all over?" (more of the article at link http://www.thestreet.com/story/10474220/1/cramer-great-depression-ii-is-off-the-table.html

[pnwmom]

1. I'd rather he say that, than the opposite -- if he has any influence on public opinion

at all.

[CoffeeCat]

3. What bothers me the most...

...is the concerted effort to get people believing that "Happy Days are Here Again!"

Look, I'd love for all of this economic bad news to be over. I want a strong economy.

However, it seems a little odd to me that the media is hyping up statistics as
"good news", when in fact, a little research into those statistics demonstrates
that the news is not so good.

Yesterday, the media collectively hyped up the increased housing start numbers
as the most fabulous news EVER! A closer look shows us that most of the increase
was due to apartment construction. This indicates that more people are opting to
rent and downsize. People with homes are moving into apartments and people looking
for a place to live--are not buying homes. That's NOT good news...it's an indication
that consumers are making MAJOR changes with regard to spending and housing.

Before the housing-start information--we were told that banks are doing SO WELL now!
We were told that Citibank, Bank of America and others--recently made profits. Ok,
that's nice that we're seeing some money coming in. However--these banks are
INSOLVENT due to toxic assets. The bread is moldy and rotting, but we're supposed
to be excited and pay attention to the pretty grape jam on the bread.

I'd like to think that they're trying to save the economy. That would be nice.
Looking on the bright side--if it helps, is not a crime. However, does anyone
really think that these criminals are merely interested in improving the
economy--because they want Americans to walk off into the sunset?

My guess is that these thugs are pumping up the talk and the market--so they can
get unsuspecting Americans (once again) to invest in their Ponzi scheme--one
last time before the entire thing tanks.

That's why I'm suspect of the good news. If they do anything, it's to enrich
themselves by robbing us.

[pnwmom]

5. I hear what you're saying, but I still don't want psychological factors to

unnecessarily drive down the market.

And if things get too bad during Obama's watch, he won't have time to solidly turn the corner before the next election. And then the country is in much deeper trouble, with a Rethug at the helm.

[Po_d Mainiac]

9. U don't even need to read the fine print

:wtf: Housing starts were up 22% over January. January housing starts sucked. How much did they suck...

Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. builders broke ground in January on the fewest houses on record as a lack of credit and plunging sales exacerbated the worst real-estate slump since the Great Depression----------------
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&refer=home&sid=aFULM7TWQGc8

So a 22% increase over squat, is squat plus pocket change

Year to year looks a little different. Housing starts are down 47% from a year ago and 74% from the peak in early 2006 respectively. Permits are down 44% in the past year. This according to the WSJ.

With Cramers record of picking stocks and market momentum, his utterance should scare the shit outa us.

YMMV

[LeftHandPath]

11. Looking for new bagholders...

They have to con enough people that the waters are safe for swimming again. Just like they did in the movie Jaws after they caught the tiger shark, "open the beaches, the water is safe for everyone".

Welcome back into the market suckers.

Full disclosure, I think we see DOW 200 before we see DOW 1000 again.

[girl gone mad]

12. Bingo.

But even if the housing starts figures had been real, would that have been good news? It seems the last thing we need right now is more houses.

The media seems to have fallen back into mindless cheerleader mode. They aren't asking real questions or doing any kind of probing analysis. They are simply regurgitating corporate talking points and spinning the statistics to promote the "recovery" meme.

[barb162]

26. Very wise words there, CoffeeCat.

I've been noticing the same things. As long as some people can find some way to put a nice coat on the tons of dismal news, they'll do so in the hopes of getting some investors to get their feet wet again and then dump the crap on them. I was listening to some analysts yesterday while stuck in traffic and this one analyst was trying desperately to sugar-coat all the bad news in to good news, by saying it looks like the bottom of the data curves seem to be flattening out versus deepening, that the bad news this month isn't as bad as the bad news last month. Yeah, and next month those curves could show a deepening. Hey, time to buy, the news can't get any worse!! LOL

[truedelphi]

28. Why don't you like grape jam? Why do you hate America! n/t

[earthside]

2. If Cramer says ...

... this is the bottom ...

... then we can all be pretty sure that we have a lot further to fall.

[GoesTo11]

4. BUYYYYYY!!!!!!

Well, when he stood there shaking everybody sold, so why not?

[DebbieCDC]

6. If that idiot said the sky is blue I'd want a second and third opinion

[jimshoes]

7. Well, I'm glad we can put

that to rest.:eyes:

[Crunchy Frog]

8. Oh shit! That's almost a fucking guarantee that there will be.

[tanyev]

10. Yeah, that was my first thought.

He's wrong more often than he's right.

x(

[tom_paine]

13. Bingo. n/t

[Better Believe It]

27. You're Right!

[tinkerbell41]

14. delaying a panic

 I truly believe "they" are trying to hold off a
panic. Most people think the economy is bad, like 
 a normal recession. The majority of Americans don't
understand this isn't your run of the mill
 downturn. Once the realization happens those at the top will
have to run for their lives! I have been trying to talk to
everyone I know that this is bad, really bad. NO ONE IS
LISTENING!!
     I think it was Aug or July last year, I pleaded with my
retired father to "move" his money, his reply?
"Oh the Market does this, it'll come back, you can't
panic" I hung up and moved all
 my employer paid annuity money to the most stable fund, if I
wouldn't I'd have a 33% loss, it took me 10 yrs. to make up
for the run in 2000-2001? He lost half of my daughter's
college fund
 "LISTENING TO CRAMER"!!!
  I have now come to the realization that getting rid of
Pensions and creating 401k's was just another way to enslave
the middle class. 

[CoffeeCat]

15. You and I are speaking the same language...

There is something going on with this recent "things are getting better" meme. It's
so contrived. They're making things up.

Just look at the 22 percent housing-start increases, that the media declared the best news EVER!

Those stats are not positive. As another poster pointed out, housing starts are in the toilet.
A 22 percent increase from barely anything--still sucks. Plus, most of that increase was due to
apartment construction--which is a horrible signal! People who need homes aren't buying houses.
They can't afford it or they're purposely downsizing...or scared to commit to a long-term mortgage.

But we hear that it's great news. All of this "the banks are profitable!" nonsense is so much
hot air--it hurts. Those banks are insolvent!

All of the underlying mess is still there. Unemployment, business failures, consumer consumption
falling off the charts, etc.

They're purposely deceiving us. That was the point of my original post.

I agree with you---they're trying to hold off a panic. They're doing something. They're trying to
entice people to put their dollars back into the market. Why?

Like you, I've tried to tell people. A lot get it. Many don't. I had to beg my husband to get us
out of the stock market. We got out in the fall.

One bellwether--in my opinion--is how the credit-card companies are behaving. They're paying people
to turn over their cards! They're cutting lines of credit and canceling cards. These are the greediest
bastards ever---and they're calling it quits. Tells ya something, doesn't it? They see what's just
over the horizon--total mayhem. They don't want panicked people in survival mode--with their credit
cards in their hands--stockpiling necessities, with no plans to pay it back.

I have a feeling that the uptick they're creating in the market--is going to be the rise before the
big fall. It's coming soon.

[tinkerbell41]

16. Agreed!!

I've been laid off since Aug. I've had plenty of time to observe really strange things going on.
Like walking in to Target or our local Supermarket and it being completely empty, maybe 10 people
This has been going on for aloooong time. My Home Depot 3 blks ,empty, people following you around the store begging to help you, 2 yrs. ago it was like the store was on autopilot no help to be found. Besides that everyone I try to talk to about this just parrots what's on the news networks, they look at me like I'm nuts.
What more of a wakeup call do you need??? It doesn't take much to go grocery shopping and notice
the place is dead. I've got 5-6 homes in neighborhood abandoned, maybe it doesn't seem like much
but it's strange to have empty houses for a year, I live in a pretty blue collar Family neighborhood you know, the place where your first home is your last, at least til kids move away.

[Hawkowl]

30. Absolutely

I have been having the same conversations! I did manage to get my in-laws to move 2/3's of their money out of stocks altogether and into money market and T bills. The average person doesn't understand how serious this is because Obama's economic disaster team is fundamentally misdiagnosing the problem as a simple liquidity problem to be solved by simply injecting more money into the system. Unfortunately, this is a rookie mistake and our problem is a balance sheet and valuation problem. Until the bad debts are exposed, de-valuated, written off and the insolvent banks put into receivership, the economy will continue to decline.

Cramer is simply cheer leading. He along with 90% of wall street economic pundits think, along with Phil Gramm, that this recession is all in our minds. That we can simply think our way out of it by being positive. Absolute horse shit. People need credit to buy goods and the banks can't offer any because they are out of money. They are so deep in the hole that the ENTIRE WORLD'S INCOME can't fill the hole. That is why the debt needs to be written off.

Welcome to DU!

[tinkerbell41]

33. Thank You

I have been on here for a long time but my password never worked, even changing it I couldn't log in. I tried 1 more time and FINALLY!!! It's sooo nice to come to a place where most people speak the same language. Having friends and family that don't embrace progressive values is maddening.

[kojak]

17. Buy Bear Stearns!

Bear cannot go down any further!

[sendero]

18. The number of shoes...

.. waiting to drop out there is big. There's Alt-A, more ARM resets, Commercial Real Estate. There's big unemployment driving down spending. There is a siege mentality driving down spending.

Where is the rosy scenario going to come from?

This little rally in the stock market is fine, but anyone who thinks were near the bottom is nuts.

And Cramer, well that stupid bastard says one thing one day and the opposite a week later over and over and over. A monkey with a dartboard would provide better information.

[Bergeret]

19. If Cramer says white, you bet your salary that the answer is black

His credibility and the credibility of Santelli and most in CNBC is on the floor.
Ask Jon Stewart.

[ww2player]

20. Check out Deepcapture.com to learn about Cramer

http://www.deepcapture.com/jim-cramer-is-a-complicated-man/ among various other articles describing how the crooks operate. Take a short position, then get "Financial journalists to write negative storys and spread false rumors. Sell the crap outta the stock without borrowing it which increases the outstanding shares driving the price even lower. Then if the company is still even in business.. think about covering the short position and actually covering all those counterfit shares they created.

Cramer has been linked to some folks with very questionable ethics. He flat out told people how he manipulated stocks when he was a hedge fund manager and the SEC doesn't do squat. Some of the very same things that were done that destroyed Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Watch http://www.vimeo.com/3722293 And see how the market was flooded with counterfit shares that drove the pps of those companies down over 50% in days. It is Nothing Short of Fraud and the SEC monkeys are running around playing with their crap trying to figure out how to eat bananas. We are Doomed without major reform. And unfortunatly the politicians are to busy blaming one another to actually do anything to help protect investors, close loopholes and investigate the crooks.

[upi402]

22. Wow, thanks for sharing

in a sobering quasi 12 steps to recovery kinda way!

I actually figured the fix was in, but so busy working for a living I couldn't keep up. Like sipping from a firehose.

Now, if I could figure out if it's time to yank my pension, lose 25% - but get to keep 75%...

:shrug:

[upi402]

21. Oh shit, cash in the pension and buy gold. Stockpile food stuffs

This cinches it.

[GoesTo11]

24. Foodstuffs won't last

You should buy some far out rural land where you can grow your own food. Then buy some weapons and a lot of ammunition to protect it once the collapse comes.

[eridani]

23. Dare we hope that one day the stock market will become as irrelevant--

--to average people as it ws in the 50s? Growing up I had heard there was such a thing as the stock market, but it wans't something that any normal person had any dealings with at all, let alone thinking of it as something you might put retirement savings into. Not that people intended to rely solely on Social Security--they had passbook savings accounts that paid 5% interest. Didn't matter which bank, as every single one paid 5%. I was more than 30 years old before I realized that 5% on savings accounts wasn't some kind of law of nature.

[truedelphi]

29. That is a very good point.

It is the smaller business and the Main Street Activity that provide for a functioning economy. Even now, things would not be so bleak if it wasn't that those of us who work for government organisations and larger companies were more or less forced to put money into 401K's - and these instruments did not allow for any of the people owning the monies to have a say over it. The pension fund managers were a breed unto themselves. And many of them made bad calls, wiping out the retirement funds of many of us.

[Turbineguy]

25. Booyaah Jimmy!

I'm switching from Rush to you!

[geckosfeet]

31. Uh oh. The kiss of death.

[jschurchin]

32. Is this the same guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3FVBKic5Ek

Oh yeah, everythings great. There will be manna from heaven. :sarcasm: