If we can get to the end of March, we will be able to get out of a lot of this credit crunch. The Fed is going to allow you to take your bad stuff and return it for cash. The Fed is just borrowing them, but they can borrow them for a long time.
This is the plan to forestall the apocalypse, to take the four ailing horsemen of the pending financial apocalypse -- Citigroup
(C)
, Merrill
(MER)
, UBS
(UBS)
and Washington Mutual
(WM)
-- and make it so they don't get sent to the glue factory. This facility will also allow Bank of America
(BAC)
and Wachovia
(WB)
, which are swimming in this bad paper -- AAA real estate paper in particular -- to catch their breath. These both need it, as you see the WB dividend yield and you recognize that Bank of America is going to own some real bad paper when the Countrywide
(CFC)
deal closes.
I want to be very clear, the moment the Treasury Department stopped being laissez-faire, the moment that it was no longer in a "let them eat cake" mode -- which is what happened when Bear
(BSC)
failed -- the world changed. We then saw the Treasury end the chokehold it had on Fannie Mae
(FNM)
. If the Fed wants to ensure a bull market in financials, all it has to do is issue $200 billion in yearlong paper, that's what the Street is desperate for, and bid for Fannie Mae mortgage bonds. Then I would predict we would begin to clean up the housing overhang, as it would be easier to get mortgage money more cheaply.
We are getting close to a resolution; we do need to prevent the four horsemen of the financial apocalypse from going lame.
That's the all-clear signal for the end of the bear market.
At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. Outside contributing columnists for TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com, including Cramer, may, from time to time, write about stocks in which they have a position. In such cases, appropriate disclosure is made. To see his personal portfolio and find out what trades Cramer will make before he makes them, sign up for Action Alerts PLUS. Watch Cramer on "Mad Money" weeknights on CNBC.
To order Cramer's newest book -- "Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer)," click here.
Click here to order "Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich," click here to order "Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World," click here to get "You Got Screwed!" and click here for Cramer's autobiography, "Confessions of a Street Addict." While he cannot provide personalized investment advice or recommendations, he appreciates your feedback and invites you to send comments by clicking here. TheStreet.com has a revenue-sharing relationship with Amazon.com under which it receives a portion of the revenue from Amazon.com purchases by customers directed there from TheStreet.com.
