Jim Cramer's Best Blogs

There is a tremendous herd instinct in Europe once the companies there believe that the dollar has bottomed or is bottoming. They do not want to miss the bottom. I can only imagine the interest that Cadbury or Nestle has right now in Campbell (CPB Quote) or Heinz (HNZ Quote) (and, believe me, Hershey (HSY Quote) if the darned Milton Hershey Trust didn't continually say the company's not for sale). These companies are all small-cap now that the dollar's come down so much and they have brought in so much stock.

I have always been concerned that we can't get a real bottom in the dollar until we stop printing so many, and that doesn't seem like it is possible. But we are seeing a lot of money being taken out of the stock market through these big deals (too bad we have so many financials hungry for money, because given the dearth of new offerings, we would possibly be talking about a stock shortage!), and we are seeing some fundamental demand for dollars.

These trends make me more bullish, not bearish. And I have to point them out.

Random musings: I'm so tempted to buy the S&P Homebuilders SPDR (XHB Quote) for a trade ahead of any federal legislation to help housing. ... I still expect that there will be more IndyMacs, I am just saying we are now in better shape to handle them because of a few good banks. I am using Helene Meisler's judgment on the overbought/oversold case on the banks. ...

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

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The FHA Can Get It Done

Originally published on Tuesday, July 24, at 11:27 a.m.

During the biggest decline in commercial real estate that this nation had seen since 1929, the government swung into action and created the Resolution Trust Corporation to sop of the bad loans and get things moving again.

The numbers we saw this morning in existing-home sales remind me of the same kind of gloom -- pervasive, ugly, even scary.

And guess what? We are getting legislation courtesy of the run on IndyMac (ironically the biggest "houses will never go down in value" yammerer out there) and the trashing of Fannie (FNM Quote) and Freddie (FRE Quote) that will start our own Mortgage Resolution Trust, except it will go by the name of the FHA.

With $300 billion in money to refinance loans, the FHA can take the job of the RTC. Bank of America's (BAC Quote) Countrywide-servicing division will offload people to it, so will Wachovia (WB Quote). They might do it en masse, they might be able to do it. You will get a chance, by the way, to buy BAC off of what looks like the next big collapse/refinancing-if-lucky -- Washington Mutual (WM Quote), the most reckless lender left.