"Only a Housing Crash Will Wake Up the Fed"
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
1/4/2008 9:54 AM EST
"Bonds are right. The Fed is wrong. The Fed is simply captured by ethanol-based inflation. It doesn't understand how the economy is working. It is focused on the cost of food and not the cost of homes.
When the book is written on this recession, it will say that the Fed didn't realize that the economy is in a deflationary spiral, as the bonds know but the academics don't.
You know something? If Bernanke ever, ever traded Treasuries, he would be really worried. He would see that the inflation he is focused on is illusory and totally oil-based, with a ridiculous obsession on ethanol that should be over but is escalating.
Now the Fed has to confront what its models are really worried about: lower employment.
So what has to happen to move these guys in the face of their bowing to ethanol-based inflation?
OK, here goes: Two to three homebuilders must have the plug pulled on them. We need to see two major mortgage insurers go belly-up. We need to see IndyMac (IMB - commentary - Cramer's Take) and Washington Mutual (WM - commentary - Cramer's Take) go under.
We will get it at this pace.
And the only thing they are paralyzed by is ethanol. We must end ethanol as a fuel to save this country's working class. Or they are going to start regarding themselves as working class -- wasn't that the outcome of Iowa?
Fortunately, everyone is so negative. Unfortunately, if you look at Intel (INTC - commentary - Cramer's Take), you know that we have totally lost tech, even as I am itching to buy it.
Can't.
Unless the Fed eases now, because most of the tech business models need 4% growth to work.
We just lost that for certain. "
(in
www.realmoney.com)