No Worries at JPMorgan

Sometimes you just have to step back from the small picture hubbub and make some assumptions about the new landscape if legislation passes.

If you look at the health care legislation you know that it is going to cut out some profitability for companies that have relied on the government for big profits, which means the companies that have the most Medicare exposure. So you go with the health maintenance company with the least Medicare exposure -- WellPoint (WLP - commentary - Trade Now). It simply can't get hit as badly as a Humana (HUM - commentary - Trade Now) or a UnitedHealth (UNH - commentary - Trade Now) because it doesn't have the exposure.

That's how I feel about JPMorgan Chase (JPM - commentary - Trade Now) when it comes to banking. It's not a hedge fund seeking to fight regulation, it is not a thrift hoping to arbitrage legislation, it is not a credit card issuer trying to get a loophole going and it isn't a consumer protection racket or a consumer defrauder. It is, in this world, a good actor.

This "sweeping" federal regulation will have lots of ramifications through the industry, but from what I can see JPMorgan has the least to worry about and it will have the most to gain if others are driven out of business.

We are seeing patterns here that are pretty evident: You need government help, you are going to pay dearly. You don't need government help, you are going to do better -- not great -- but better than if you do need help.

This regime takes some getting used to because the previous regime's mantra was to give taxpayer gifts to public companies. This regime either wants to take back the gifts or make you pay for them yourself. So the more self-reliant, such as WellPoint and JPMorgan, the better they will do.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long JPMorgan.

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Know What You Own: Cramer mentioned JPMorgan. Related stocks are Citigroup (C - commentary - Trade Now), US Bancorp (USB - commentary - Trade Now) and PNC Financial (PNC - commentary - Trade Now).

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