Oil Futures Reality Sets in

The ramifications of price-fixing in oil -- where a nobody trader levered up and took oil for a $10 ride -- are just dawning on people outside the oil patch.

I took a caller tonight asking about Chicago Bridge & Iron (CBI - commentary - Trade Now) -- like Foster Wheeler (FWLT - commentary - Trade Now), a real binary stock that when oil's going higher is a must buy, but you can't walk away from it fast enough when oil goes the other way. And it is going the other way.

Another caller wanted to know about the solar stocks -- they could be hideous here. Even the fertilizer stocks, so often linked with ethanol even as they should be linked with food shortages, are giving it up.

The ramifications of the loss of this odd pillar that seemed to tell us "don't get too bearish on the economy" is much larger than I first understood. You tend to forget how many stocks trade in lockstep with the futures even as futures are simply a joke.

I see how it happens: Today I overheard someone say that oil was down because of worldwide economic weakness and I wanted to laugh. Oil's down, of course, because it was manipulated upward.

I am taking grave heat from the "you know nothing" crowd for not understanding the way futures markets work. I come back and say, "Listen pal, I know human nature." When a market is this shallow and you and some buds want to make some quick money, you are going to go for it because it was legally sanctioned by the whitewash that was the 'investigation' into $147 oil.

One day we will see this oil market for what it was, something just like the Amaranth corner in natural gas a few years ago.

My hope is that even if U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler is defeated by the futures mob, we get some prosecutor in there who builds a fraud and manipulation case against someone, anyone for what happened in 2008 before the statute runs out. Because even if institutional buying had a big hand in it as it was larger than the futures themselves, the scalpers and the rogues manipulated it pure as day and we all paid for their profits.

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Jim Cramer is co-founder and chairman of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. Outside contributing columnists for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, including Cramer, may, from time to time, write about stocks in which they have a position. In such cases, appropriate disclosure is made. To see his personal portfolio and find out what trades Cramer will make before he makes them, sign up for Action Alerts PLUS. Watch Cramer on "Mad Money" weeknights on CNBC. To order Cramer's newest book -- "Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer)," click here. Click here to order "Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich," click here to order "Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World," click here to get "You Got Screwed!" and click here for Cramer's autobiography, "Confessions of a Street Addict." While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he appreciates your feedback and invites you to send comments by clicking here.

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