The New Reality

The marker-uppers are walking away, right on schedule. They gave you a terrific chance with the markups of everything from natural gas and ag to Apple (AAPL - commentary - Cramer's Take) and First Solar.

Plus the marker-downers are now in charge when it comes to the financials. The raids in Washington Mutual (WM - commentary - Cramer's Take) and MBIA (MBI - commentary - Cramer's Take) are things of ugliness (or beauty depending upon which side you are on).

Meanwhile, the put-buying in the Financial Sector SPDR (XLF - commentary - Cramer's Take) coupled with the Lehman (LEH - commentary - Cramer's Take) shorting is keeping that stock from lifting its head. Lehman may be buying back stock, but they can't be there in the last half hour, so I suspect the bear attack will hit very hard in the last half hour. The bears are back to printing money.

The fact that there are no zebras anymore, that the SEC bought into the whole laissez-faire thing, has brought about a remarkable transformation where the bears can crush the bulls and wreck the very companies that laissez-faire was meant to advance.

Call it late-stage capitalism, where shorts without upticks do indeed collapse American business.

At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

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