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TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says this bank on the FDIC's problem list is big enough to matter.

How much was made of the FDIC's "problem bank" list yesterday? Frankly, a little too much -- the list could be 200 banks long and be insignificant or it could be five banks long and be of incredible importance.

Is there any doubt that that the FDIC can handle 100 banks of the $1 billion to $2 billion variety? There shouldn't be. They can look the other way on most of them if they have to, or close them sequentially while asking for more capital along the way.

But if BankUnited (NASDAQ: BKUNA) (Cramer's Take) with $7 billion in deposits goes under, that'd makes headlines. It would be particularly newsworthy because it is in a visible location (the Miami area) and would cause a flood of stories about older people worried about their deposits -- pensioners -- and a big round of stories about how horrible Florida real estate really is. Then you get stories about how IndyMac and BankUnited represent the "system," and when you add that to the woes of Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) -- which are now directly making it harder to get cheap mortgage money because they are paying through the nose for their own money and buying fewer mortgages, just want we don't need -- and you get headlines galore about how bad things are. When you couple that with the inaction of Treasury on the FNM/FRE front, you are going to be in for a test of the July 15 lows.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says that even in lousy markets -- and this is one of them -- you can find stocks to buy.

When nothing's working, something's working. I know sounds counterintuitive. but there is simply no reason to think, as bad as this market is -- and it is really, really bad -- that there isn't something to buy.

We are gripped by the fear of the remaining black holes -- Ford (NYSE: F) (Cramer's Take), GM (NYSE: GM) (Cramer's Take), Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take), AIG (NYSE: AIG) (Cramer's Take), Lehman (NYSE: LEH) (Cramer's Take), WaMu (NYSE: WM) (Cramer's Take) and Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) -- and we all know it. They are not convenient whipping boys. They are the Seven Deadly Stocks, and they aren't going away.

But are they really hurting General Mills (NYSE: GIS) (Cramer's Take)? Can I see selling Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) (Cramer's Take) because of them? After we know the price increases are all baked in? And don't hit me with that strong-dollar stuff, because GIS doesn't have that much overseas exposure. Same with Pepsi (NYSE: PEP) (Cramer's Take): This is a national company with an international arm that is generating oodles of cash and doesn't have as much bad commodity exposure as it did a few months ago.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the whole market pays for the Treasury's purposeful indecision.

What are they going to do about the preferreds? Are they going to let them go down the drain? Are they going to keep current management? What are they going to do to reassure foreign governments about the obligations.

Don't worry. We will know this weekend.

Oops.

That's how we left last Friday, with an understanding that the Treasury knows that every day it waits to take over Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) is a day when things get worse, when the nation's credibility darkens -- as this is sovereign debt's repository -- and when rates can't go down.

But the Treasury's not like what we think it is. The Treasury wants to wait for a collapse; it wants everyone to know that Fannie and Freddie are history because it is afraid. It doesn't want to be interventionist, and if it does, it wants the people who run Fannie and Freddie gone, and yet it doesn't' really know how to do it until we have total collapse. Then it has the cover of total collapse and doesn't have to say it intervened or bailed out or whatever it is so worried about.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says news is not being properly disseminated, and some people are getting an unfair edge.

I love how easily I am misunderstood by people who have about one-tenth the history I have in the markets. I love it, because their dogmatic criticism of me is so unfounded and anti-historical, not to mention totally un-rigorous, that I get a kick out of reading it.

I am talking, of course, about the outrageous trading in Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) over the last few days.

My beef: For most of the last 80 years, when there was "unusual activity" in a stock, as you would certainly have to say there has been here, the New York Stock Exchange or the company or even the SEC would call a halt in trading, the reason being that it is clear there is news that is not being properly disseminated. Halting trading is something that is done to level the playing field, to be sure that some don't know something that others don't.

Here the disinformation has been so ludicrous, the lack of disclosure so ridiculous, the misdirection so nonstop that it is simply inconceivable that everyone has the same information available to trade on. That's the darned law, for heaven's sake. It isn't something I made up. We aren't supposed to have situations where some know information and others don't. Given the nature of the talks involving so many parties and the leaks that are happening left and right, does this feel like a place where the average investor is getting a fair shake? I don't think so. How anyone could even disagree with that notion is the height of naiveté.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the common would be crushed on a government takeover, but everything else would be saved.

The most important positive that must occur in this economy is for housing to stop going down. It is even more important than oil going down, because it cuts to the core of consumer confidence and credit.

House prices are coming down, but that's not enough. We also need lower mortgage rates, and the spread between the mortgage rates and Treasuries is so high that it's hard to make case that you are getting any sort of bargain at all on the money you are trying to borrow. It should be a great time to buy a house -- no demand, plenty of supply -- but mortgage rates are just too high.

But we all know how they would go down and go down big -- if Treasury took over Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) this weekend. If you back off Fannie's and Freddie's bonds, you get a decline in rates of mammoth proportions. It might make sense to buy a house simply because the rates would be so low.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says this administration's hallmark is coming too late to the party.

A headline came over the wires yesterday, and it caused me to throw my hands up in shock: The SEC is debating new short-selling rules for the market.

I said to myself, "They have to be kidding."

How can they be so obtuse?

How can they not get what is going on?

When the market bottomed on July 15, three things occurred:

the Congress got religion on the housing bill, and the president went along;

gasoline and oil peaked; and

the SEC finally decided to crack down on the reckless bear raids that were making it impossible for our financials to refinance.

The financials then rallied huge, just huge, and the prudent ones, like Merrill's (NYSE: MER) (Cramer's Take) John Thain, took advantage of the short-selling crackdown and first, brilliantly, said he didn't need capital, exacerbating the plight of the shorts, and then jammed on a gigantic equity offering that will let Merrill get through this period.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says there's a big disconnect between the trade, orchestrated by the funds, and the real-world demand.

How can anyone actually own oil or natural gas through this relentless assault on price? I know when it was going up, the talk was that all of these new funds were indexing trillions to commodities and it was just going to stay there, and that's why there was a new level of oil demand.

Can those same accounts come in every day and take this relentless pasting no matter what the news? And do they believe the news, that they are losing money today because some storm went to Daytona and not to New Orleans?

Yesterday, I had Jim Hackett, the CEO of Anadarko Pete (NYSE: APC) (Cramer's Take) on "Mad Money at the Half," and he was flabbergasted at the activity in the futures pit and how unrealistic it has become. He's focused on natural gas, where he says the demand at $8 by industry -- the glass makers and chemical companies and steel and aluminum users -- is voracious. But the futures themselves just keep going down, regardless of the demand.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says lower gas prices mean the numbers are too low.

People are missing this retail move. They are missing it because the market is deciding right now that the guidance companies are giving is just plain wrong given the $3.50 at the pump (although premium's a lot more expensive). They are also recognizing that the strong are surviving and thriving and taking share in a radical fashion -- witness Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) (Cramer's Take), which must be killing Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD) (Cramer's Take) and the mom-and-pop shops out there.

When I met with Lowe's last year, they told me that they have picked up share in every downturn. They did not know when the downturn would end or when you would see the results, but they were confident that the longer the downturn lasted, the more likely they would be to have pulled away from their competition.

It looks like this is the breakaway quarter.

Why else has there been so much dismissal of the management's negatives that you could see such great runs in a Kohl's (NYSE: KSS) (Cramer's Take) or a Buckle (NYSE: BKE) (Cramer's Take) or a Macy's (NYSE: M) (Cramer's Take) or JC Penney (NYSE: JCP) (Cramer's Take) from the bottom?

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer wonders why no one's cheering about this -- the headwinds are gone.

This is an epic collapse of commodities, one that is cutting every investor to the core. It is as if whoever was actually buying them -- not trading them, not speculating in them -- has vanished. That's how little demand there is. It is as if everyone in the world who was being paid in dollars now actually wants those dollars. It is as if all demand leading up to this moment for the last several years was all phony and disappeared. It is as if any country that was hoarding minerals and oil and grain no longer needs them. And it is as if every hedge fund in the world had purchased everything to sell into that demand and is now long the stuff and dying.

To me, all you need to watch is gold. The fact that gold could not hold that long-term trend line, that it sliced through $790, tells me that we are not done with this great unwind.

What's amazing is how silent it all is. We heard about how horrible this commodity rally was for the world every step of the way. With each dollar up of each commodity, we heard how it would destroy the Western world. How many times did you hear that the weak dollar would be the end of us?

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says that as consumers try to stretch their dining dollar, Darden, Yum! and McDonald's will benefit.

We all know we are overstored in this country and over-restauranted. There are tons of players -- so many that the competition got too hard. Now they collapse. That Uno might miss a payment, that Bennigan's and Steak & Ale are going away, that Bakers Square and Village Inn have filed for bankruptcy: All say the industry is in big trouble.

But ask yourself, if you are Darden (NYSE: DRI) (Cramer's Take), do you think this is a good or bad development? If you are Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM) (Cramer's Take), do you think that this, at last, is your time? How about McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) (Cramer's Take)? Room to go more upscale, perhaps?

We read all of these horrible articles every day about restaurants, and yet we see that the stocks of Yum! and Darden hang in great, particularly the first, which gave hideous guidance and yet is now higher than it was before it told people commodity costs were hurting it. McDonald's? How many stocks just hit their 52-week high?

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says struggling banks can be shorted to oblivion now that the rules won't be enforced.

Memo to the FDIC: Watch your back. The SEC just flipped its allegiance to the bad guys, the guys who want to break not just certain banks, but your bank! That's right, with the scrapping of the emergency rule that eliminated naked shorting, where you don't have to find the stock, and with the end of the vigilance against bear raiding, the SEC may have just caused a run at the FDIC.

I had hoped that the SEC would see that these financials have been manipulated to unreasonable levels, making the confidence in all institutions so low that nobody wanted to give them money. The rule change -- which when you think of it, wasn't much of a rule change as much as an enforcement of the way things are supposed to be, where you actually have to find the stock you sold short first so you don't fail to deliver -- worked!

It gave the system some breathing room. I think the rule change might have saved Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) (Cramer's Take) from being shorted into oblivion so it couldn't have done its deal. Lehman (NYSE: LEH) (Cramer's Take) didn't do a deal, those bad boys be back on the griddle now for unknown European exposure. AIG (NYSE: AIG) (Cramer's Take) wasn't protected in the first place and I believe will need to raise $10 billion to $15 billion in the teens to cover its European exposure. Now there's little hope at all for Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) or Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take), as their stocks will be blitzed into oblivion and Hank Paulson will have to start the planning of cash infusions as opposed to what he said last Sunday -- why did he say that, for heaven's sake? Maybe he's too close to John "We don't need capital" Thain from their Goldman (NYSE: GS) (Cramer's Take) days.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says all that money has to go somewhere, and this is a likely destination.

Clash of the ideals! Oil's down, and what can you buy when there's so much bad bank news? What can you buy when Wachovia (NYSE: WB) (Cramer's Take) is boosting reserves and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS)) (Cramer's Take) is still being pursued by authorities and JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) (Cramer's Take) says July stunk and UBS (NYSE: UBS) (Cramer's Take) is so tarnished that you can't believe it was once the most conservative blue chip out there.

The answer is tech, of course!

Wait a second. Would anyone mind if we actually had a reason to buy tech beyond the Kindle, the device that made Citigroup gaga about Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) (Cramer's Take) -- not that you needed a device to do that.

Sure, we have pre-seasonality. Remember, you are supposed to buy tech at the end of the summer, not that anyone waits that long.

But what we really have is that quant thinking that Doug rails about so correctly: the CDO of stocks! We take a little bad tech, the lowest-end stuff like RF Micro (NASDAQ: RFMD) (Cramer's Take) and Parametric (NASDAQ: PMTC) (Cramer's Take); mix in some mid-tech, stuff like National Semi (NYSE: NSM) (Cramer's Take) and Analog Devices (NYSE: ADI) (Cramer's Take); then throw in Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) (Cramer's Take), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (Cramer's Take), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) (Cramer's Take), Amazon and Adobe (NASDAQ: ABDE) (Cramer's Take) -- yes, Adobe; then split them into tranches, slice 'em up, and offer a derivative on them for those who want leverage and we have, well, a tech rally!

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says people think the banks can't sustain the rally. Here's why they're wrong.

Sometimes, someone has to give the bullish, "On the other hand ...". There's a wide perception that the banks' good fortune of making money on the net interest margins -- the principal source of earnings besides fees this quarter -- can't last. Our old colleague Peter Eavis spells things out pretty succinctly and, shocker, bearishly in The Wall Street Journal this very morning in an article that should have you salivating for when the short-selling restrictions come off the financials and we can free-fire zone 'em again.

But how about the, "To be sure ..."? How about the, "On the other hand ..."? Or how about, "Some observers do point out ..."?

Nah, that would water down the article or even kill it outright.

Indulge me, for a second, on what I thought would have been a more provocative story for this stage in the rally, which is: Given all the bad news about earnings and losses and bad loans and auction preferreds, how the heck did the banks rally? Was it all a big joke, or is something else going on?

Then, from there, you say, "OK, what am I missing, because this net interest margin can't be banked on as people think it can be."

The Street.com's Jim Cramer says people have more money in their wallets again, and that can only be positive.

One-time stimulus? Or multi-time pump break? Last night when I was filling up for $3.67 a gallon -- a month after paying $4.10 at the same pump -- I found myself thinking that I didn't have to go to the ATM after the fill-up. I had something left. I didn't feel that way about the stimulus check, which came and went.

When Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) (Cramer's Take) said yesterday the effect of the stimulus check was over, people freaked out and trashed the stock well beyond reason. (I will buy more of it today if I can for Action Alerts PLUS.) But Wal-Mart was reacting to the end of that one-time stimulus.

If oil keeps going as I think it will, we are going to see gasoline well below $3.50 -- we have it at $3.60 now with oil at $110 -- and that part of the tax, a real tax that impacts all Americans, will be gone. The oil decline and, more important, the nat gas decline, still haven't registered in peoples' minds. The idea that it is possible that gasoline might go to, say, $3.00, is in no one's model. That your heating bill could be the same or less doesn't matter to the bears, either.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says this consumer-products titan has weathered the storm and should enjoy lower inputs.

General Mills (NYSE: GIS) (Cramer's Take) hits another 52-week high. This company has been one of the great standout performers this year, just a juggernaut, even though it is a gigantic buyer of grains and a huge user of cardboard boxes and plastic wrapping. Plus, it needs gasoline to deliver product. Some of this move has to be attributed to projections of huge declines in raw costs. Those are going to happen, as we know from the commodities.

But perhaps it is worth noting that few packaged goods companies -- perhaps Heinz (NYSE: HNZ) (Cramer's Take) is an exception -- dominate and innovate as well as GIS does. It has always been one of the great brand producers and acquirers, and also a company that can take out costs better than anyone. When I compare how a Unilever (NYSE: UN) (Cramer's Take) or a Clorox (NYSE: CLX) (Cramer's Take) has handled the raw costs to how General Mills has performed, it is almost as if GIS is a pharmaceutical with no raw cost exposure whatsoever.