Obama Is a Bearish Macro Fundamental

If you are up this year, how in heck could you not take something off the table into this rally? That's my biggest dilemma as we go into a three-day weekend with an activist president suggesting programs that will take away as many jobs as they create, reduce consumer buying power and make it so your utility bill goes up. The macro is intruding on the micro, and it makes me uncomfortable.

I simply can't get over the power of this president. I don't know what I would be doing if I were Southern Co. (SO - commentary - Trade Now) -- although it is up today -- as it is so coal-based. Forget the credit-card issuers; they are now considered war criminals in Washington, I guess.

And now Tim Geithner is talking on Bloomberg about some serious plans to rein in financial pay ... to be rolled out in June! Why do these guys have to focus and talk so much about issues that make the market go down and therefore cause far more problems than they realize? When will they understand the power of their words on the market? When will they understand that we are in a recession, a serious one, and it isn't the time to push for card check, carbon banning and higher pay for government unions?

I know that if you criticize Obama, you have to be prepared for the onslaught, but why aren't other people speaking up on these issues? Why does the agenda have to be so anti-stock?

So with that, and not knowing which industry is coming into this weekend's cross-hairs, it is only logical to get more defensive and do some selling of industrials that are up huge, betting on a quick recovery that isn't occurring, or consumer-spending plays that will be hurt by the tightening of consumer credit. All in all, I would rather own Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY - commentary - Trade Now) than Caterpillar (CAT - commentary - Trade Now) or 3M (MMM - commentary - Trade Now) right now, especially because the latter two are up nicely and the former hasn't done a thing.

Random musings: I would still be buying Sears (SHLD - commentary - Trade Now) up here. The issues here are all about debt negotiations, and Eddie Lampert has put them behind him. There are only 116 million shares out there, with a lot more ammo to buy back stock.

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Know What You Own: In Friday's early trading, the most active stocks included Bank of America (BAC - commentary - Trade Now), General Motors (GM - commentary - Trade Now) and Citigroup (C - commentary - Trade Now).

At the time of publication, Cramer was long BMY, MMM and CAT.

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