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Shocking!
Oh please, just another bad employment number, just another reason the
Fed should be more concerned with loosening rather than tightening now that the dollar is soaring and commodities are falling apart. But Bernanke's been silent, and the other Fed governors blather about inflation pressures even though the futures say otherwise.
Today's more important calls are Goldman's downgrade of
Merrill (MER Quote - Cramer on MER - Stock Picks) to "sell" -- of course there are more writedowns, silly -- and the far more important bill coming due
AIG (AIG Quote - Cramer on AIG - Stock Picks) courtesy of Morgan Stanley's research. We have to be careful with Morgan Stanley's research on the issue, though, because the analyst actually was foolish enough to have a "buy" on this piece of junk before his downgrade. Plus, the analyst is only using a $10 billion to $15 billion writedown estimate. Anyone who has attempted to understand the derivatives issues for Europe is swamped -- it's a moving target -- but I would be shocked if the capital raise needed is less than $20 billion; remember, they have no deposit base.
These calls are really awful for another reason: Both of these reports could have come out two days ago when the stocks were in rally mode. I don't know what happened "in the committee," but it looks like both of these analysts waited until the bears started swarming to throw some raw meat on the table.
Remember my view: AIG is in real trouble, along with
Ford (F Quote - Cramer on F - Stock Picks),
Fannie (FNM Quote - Cramer on FNM - Stock Picks) (although doing better than
Freddie (FRE Quote - Cramer on FRE - Stock Picks)),
Washington Mutual (WM Quote - Cramer on WM - Stock Picks) (although not as worried now that the FDIC is taking over failed banks and keeping the bad loans and selling the deposits),
Citigroup (C Quote - Cramer on C - Stock Picks) and
Lehman (LEH Quote - Cramer on LEH - Stock Picks). I expect Citi to take big writedowns after its German division is sold, and I expect Lehman to announce something before it reports that will keep the firm in business.
But the employment number is strictly par for the course. Gold should be down big, not up. It will go down. And rates will go still lower.
At the time of publication, Cramer was long Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
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Jim Cramer
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