The Root of ING's Problems

Editor's note: Jim Cramer will present his 2009 stock outlook for the first time at TheStreet.com Investment Conference on Saturday, Oct. 25. Click for details.

Right now, it looks like the only item of note this weekend may be the ING (ING - commentary - Cramer's Take) bailout, where the Netherlands gives this one-time conservative bank $13.4 billion and the dividend on the common shares gets eliminated. I say "one-time conservative" because ING had been creating a world-class, middle-class online bank around the world and was doing it well.

The crushing of ING, like so many other institutions, can be laid at the feet of Lehman Brothers and New York Federal Reserve president Tim Geithner's decision to let the too-big-too-fail Lehman, ah, fail. I am blaming Geithner, because his role as executioner was outed in a fabulous article today in The New York Times about Goldman Sachs (GS - commentary - Cramer's Take).

ING, once again, is a reminder of two horrid actions taken by the U.S. government: the confiscation of Fannie Mae (FNM - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Freddie Mac (FRE - commentary - Cramer's Take) after multiple government assurances that it wouldn't take such a step, and the elimination of Lehman, which had such far-reaching consequences that we are still felling the heat today. I believe that if it weren't for those two decisions, we would now be facing only the Chinese economic slowdown and the housing crisis, and those challenges would be manageable, although they still would be possible causes of a recession.

But since the Fannie/Freddie and Lehman fiascoes, the U.S. and world governments have had to print money and inject money to save the basic system of finance -- not just to prevent a slowdown -- which has backed up interest rates and caused housing to take a huge step down with no near-term end in sight.

That's right, it's all been man-made since Fannie/Freddie, and the blood of this recession is on the hands of the Treasury, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FDIC and, most important, the ill-prepared, complacent and academic Federal Reserve.

Random musings: I'm working all weekend on my conference ideas, and I think I have some good ones. Starting with 25, I have winnowed them to 15 this weekend and will try to have the best 10 by Saturday.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long GS.

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