One of the Best

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Remember the craze to own deposit banks? Remember the thought that if you had oodles of deposits, you could make it through this period with much more aplomb than if you were an investment bank, an investment bank like Lehman or Merrill (MER - commentary - Cramer's Take) or Bear? Or, of course, obviously, Morgan Stanley (MS - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Goldman Sachs (GS - commentary - Cramer's Take)?

The stocks are saying that the judgment -- the judgment in favor of deposits against so-called "hot money" -- may be inaccurate or at least premature.

The judgment, as meted by Goldman Sachs' stock, in fact, is saying that the deposit game may be dead wrong for 2009.

You can see what's happening with the Goldman Sachs base and the lack of erratic trading, perhaps because the goal of breaking Goldman Sachs didn't happen. It didn't happen by now, it ain't happening -- that's what the stock's screaming.

And the subtext can't be lost on people -- the deposit banks are hostage to the consumer, who without stimulus, without tax credits, without jobs, can't be counted on. Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, has morphed into something that might turn out to be, not the hedge fund bank, but the advisory bank, the one without the consumer addiction that might turn into the 2009 version of the bad hedge fund/bad leveraged loan scenario that almost wrecked Goldman in 2008.

Just as we embrace and give a premium multiple to Northern Trust (NTRS - commentary - Cramer's Take) and State Street (STT - commentary - Cramer's Take) -- however undeserving given the asset-backed nonsense that plagued them -- as the custodian banks, we now have one company truly dedicated to advising the rich and the corporate, and that's Goldman Sachs. With no bad loans to consumers.

I still like the exposure to the big banks -- Wells Fargo (WFC - commentary - Cramer's Take) and JPMorgan (JPM - commentary - Cramer's Take) -- because when they come back, they will roar. But the obituary for Goldman Sachs (and to a lesser extent Morgan Stanley) just didn't happen in 2008.

And therefore, given the reform of the Goldman balance sheet, it isn't going to happen in 2009.

It will, instead -- even with this level of activity -- be one of the best stories out there, one that should quickly go to a premium of book value, to $100, given the benign market we have suddenly and unequivocally discovered.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan.

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