Wrongheaded Fed Heads Ignore Cold December

American Express (AXP - commentary - Cramer's Take) really killed this market. That firm's been struggling for some time. Frankly, it isn't really run well anymore. It's being run like a bad credit-card company. The worry here is so pervasive now about spending that you have to believe something really changed in the last couple weeks of 2007.

My thesis is this: December was just a horrible, horrible month. I say this because so many consumer spending companies -- Men's Wearhouse (MW - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Barnes & Noble (BN - commentary - Cramer's Take) being the best examples -- really thought going into December that things were quite good. (Remember, I also think that this happened to AT&T (T - commentary - Cramer's Take) but that's now a sore topic! And I like AT&T right here, right now!) The reversal -- reinforced by horrid numbers from Tiffany (TIF - commentary - Cramer's Take) and that stunning decline at Capital One (COF - commentary - Cramer's Take) -- has people reeling because the decline happened so quickly.

My take is this: the consumer is stunned and confused and worried. The psychology is very fragile here.

But people like the unelected Dick Fischer from the Dallas Fed and Tom Hoenig from Kansas City seem to think that such a decline does not matter. Nope. Not at all. Not an issue. Things, to them, are very sound.

Not what we need. Not what we need at all.

Random musings: Costco's (COST - commentary - Cramer's Take) being caught up in the vortex of the weak consumer. I don't buy it but you can take down anything in this environment.

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

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