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RealMoney.com: Jim Cramer Blog
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What's the Opposite of 'Goldilocks'?

By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist

5/27/2008 7:56 AM EDT
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Where are the inventory builds? In anything? Where are they? The U.S. economy now seems in perma-decline, yet there is no glut of anything but wood, and even that is in shorter supply than I thought.

 
The big tension in the economies, ours and worldwide, is that economies simply don't slow enough to rebuild anything.

While I have been the first to explain the irrelevance of inventory numbers domestically, just scoffing at both the Wednesday oil and Thursday natural gas numbers, there is a remarkable lack of build even with gasoline at $4. That shouldn't be happening. We should be able to catch our breath.

I know the Federal Reserve feels at fault for this, hence their endless "we're done" calls, which wreck the stock market each time, as it was wrecked this time around again. Believe me, if you take rates to 1%, you take the "Lehman Brothers (LEH - commentary - Cramer's Take) viability" off the table once and for all and make it just an earnings power story, which it probably is anyway.

I had not been in favor of any more rate cuts, but that looks like a wrong judgment. Not holding the door open produced the horrid results we just had last week.

Still, isn't it surprising that without strangely hot weather, with gasoline allegedly sky-high, employment teetering, real estate collapsing, we don't use less energy?

To me it is a sign of health and a sign of, well, weirdness. We should be well over the hump in a decline in everything. We should be up to our eyeballs in copper and lead and zinc. Instead, we still don't have the infrastructure in place to tap all we have worldwide. We should be able to hold down natural gas, as the pull to transfer from oil to natural gas hasn't happened yet.

But nothing works right. Nothing.

And so it goes. More pressure ahead. More upward pressure. No breath taken.

At least not yet.

So the worries about inflation do not abate and we can't get the new cycle going because of it.

At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.






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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.

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