Cramer: 10 Bearish Myths of 2011

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NEW YORK (RealMoney) -- Oh, to be part of the intelligentsia, the bearish think tanks that inspire so much of what passes for conventional wisdom that then gets passed on to the "news." I yearn for it because it is never wrong, always prescient and seems to make so much money when the truth is, of course, that it is often wrong, rarely prescient and costs you a fortune.

With that in mind, here are the 10 bearish myths, all conventional wisdom, that you read about over and over again and pretty much took for gospel:

1. The United States would be one of the worst performing markets of the year. When I was a hedge fund manager, no matter how antiquated it seemed, I compared myself to the Dow Jones average. They were up 5.5%, led by McDonald's(MCD) up 30%, with giant exposure to overseas, particularly ailing Germany and France, followed by IBM(IBM), rallying 25%, also with a giant business in Europe, followed by Pfizer(PFE), the drug company that vaulted 24% despite losing Lipitor exclusivity, and Home Depot(HD) running 20% even as the housing crisis worsened in 2012.

2. The dollar had to go down, didn't it? Obama busted the budget. The GOP showed no restraint. We printed money left and right through the Fed. Bernanke expanded the monetary base and the Fed's balance sheet. We had horrendous trade deficits, much of it needlessly with oil. The DXY, the dollar index, started at 79 and finished at 80. That's some dollar decline. Lesser of all evils, perhaps?

3. Interest rates had to go higher, didn't they? Wasn't that what the big budget tussle was about? Didn't we fear a huge increase in rates from the brilliant S&P downgrade? Aren't we spending way too much money in a guns-and-butter, Lyndon-Johnson-like plan? Aren't we the most profligate country in the world? Didn't we fail to curtail any entitlements? Yes, we did, but we have no inflation in this country to speak of save food inflation, and judging by the climbing restaurant stocks and declining ag stocks, that might be a thing of the past. Ben Bernanke did keep them down, but I question how much he was responsible for. The Chinese are nuts not to take the gain here. Turns out it was a trade of a lifetime. Chou en Lai, that wild and crazy Communist visionary, would be thrilled and no doubt rolling in his grave with joy. Congrats to The New York Times' Paul Krugman for getting this right and recognizing that employment was the issue. Razzes to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who didn't realize the opportunity of a lifetime to issue a $1 trillion dollars' worth of 30-year paper and eliminate our potential Italy liquidity problem own the road.