Low Mortgage Rates Are The Market's Best Plus

House prices down big. Mortgage rates down to the lowest in five years -- courtesy of the best bond guy in the world, none other than our own Tony Crescenzi.

This story remains, to me, the biggest positive of 2009. You simply can't imagine how great it would be if house price depreciation would stop, and when you see these rates, you know buyers will be flushed out from the sidelines.

This decline in rates is a continuing story, and it is going to cause a rush, at one moment, to lock down a mortgage and just go buy something, anything. You can just make the calculations: a 10% decline in your home, coupled with a mortgage at 4.75% -- where I believe rates are headed -- simply gets to be a rounding error unless you are flipping a home. We have not been able to put a bottom in housing, but we do know mortgage rates at the lowest in five years is tempting to all but those who are about to lose their jobs.

It's numbers like these that keep driving me toward a Wells Fargo (WFC - commentary - Cramer's Take) / Wachovia (WB - commentary - Cramer's Take) mortgage dominator. But it's also what drives me toward Black & Decker (BDK - commentary - Cramer's Take) even though it is possible, as I have said to Action Alerts PLUS subscribers, that the numbers are too high.

Disagree? Then why is Stanley Works (SWK - commentary - Cramer's Take) barely down? It's because people see the turn on the horizon, and they get a nice dividend while they wait.

Now, the big question for all of us is an equation: is low gasoline + low heating oil+ low mortgages less than or greater than unemployment as a force for the market.

I am so fearful of high unemployment that I would say they are equal. If we get a real stimulus plan and an incentive to hire, then and only then does the equation tip to the bulls.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Black & Decker and Wachovia.

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