Jim Cramer's Best Blogs

Jim Cramer fills his blog on RealMoney every day with his up-to-the-minute reactions to what's happening in the market and his legendary ahead-of-the-crowd ideas. This week he blogged on:

• the importance of housing,
• the crucifixion of Buffett, and
• money on the sidelines.

Click here for information on RealMoney, where you can see all the blogs, including Jim Cramer's -- and reader comments -- in real time.

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I'll Say It Again -- Housing Is the Key
Posted at 10:53 a.m., Jan. 26, 2009

Money for every interest. For car dealers. For parts suppliers. For bridge makers. For municipalities. For every bank, including banks just bought by insurers to stay afloat.

But no money to attack the root cause -- the lack of homebuying. No tax credit for buying a home from inventory, just when the numbers show that when price is cut, people buy. The numbers this morning were incredibly bullish for the market -- but just think what would happen if it were made sustainable by Obama.

Yet there is nothing being mentioned in any of these packages, even though you can see how the market cheers when we get existing-home inventory put away.

Why doesn't Obama follow up on this? Why doesn't he act to hasten the bottom in housing, which would then bring back so many of the reserves on banks' balance sheets to lend? Because there is no lobbyist for old homes. There are lobbyists for new homes galore. Hovnanian (HOV Quote), KB Home (KBH Quote), Lennar (LEN Quote), Pulte (PHM Quote), Toll (TOL Quote), Horton (DHI Quote) -- they build homes. We hear that they put people to work, but we don't hear the flip side, which is that when they keep building, they build inventory. Their decision not to build any more in the West, where they can't make any money, is driving the inventory declines, as price is driving sales.

But the homebuilders give lots of money. So they might be able to line their pockets like those pork-barrel companies we are beginning to hear about that get snuck in and win the lottery.

But no money for the root cause -- declining home prices.