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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.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says they should be punished for trying an end run on taxpayers.

Love Centex (NYSE: CTX) (Cramer's Take), sell Horton (NYSE: DHI) (Cramer's Take)? That's how I feel after reading Horton's pathetic plea to bring back down-payment assistance for this industry, which remains unpunished for all it did to foment the housing crisis.

Yesterday, in one of our "Wall Street Confidential" series, I opined that Centex was shaping up to be one of the better builders after making so many right moves in the last year to preserve capital. I didn't care for industry leader D.R. Horton, though.

And that was before I read the outrageous comments from Horton CEO Don Tomnitz in Market Watch yesterday, where he decried that the new housing law didn't include more down-payment assistance loans from the FHA. These seller assistance loans plied basically, by the homebuilders that allow homebuyers to use a back door to FHA loans, have been defaulting at very high rates. The Congress, in an actual dollop of wisdom, scrapped them and instead gave people a tax credit of $7,500 to buy a new house, not bad considering that houses have retreated in value to the point that even though you need to put down more money as a percentage basis, as an absolute basis there's some affordability. This kind of loan is precisely what got us in trouble, an affordable loan that people ultimately couldn't afford that just helped Horton dump properties.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says this commodity collapse is giving the Fed room to cut.

As the Fed meets and the credit crisis still roars, it is worth assessing all of the chatter that the Fed can't do a thing and that every aspect of everything is all bad. I put it like that because it is hard to read anything without concluding that there will be high-double-digit defaults and that the credit markets haven been crushed and are not useful and the world is, well, coming to an end.

Funny thing: when the world comes to an end, you get a collapse in commodities, which is what is happening right now; it is something the Fed should keep an eye on. That's because there is suddenly more room to cut if necessary, and that matters because the banks need it -- they need more room to make money on net interest margins and playing the curve, because we all know that they need capital, and this is a good way to raise capital. It is the way that capital was raised for BankBoston and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take) and Chase and Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) in the old days, and it would be the same again if the Fed needs to help.

In other words, caught in all the gloom is the fact that the Fed is winning, and with winning comes flexibility. I expect nothing from the Fed, nothing, but I also want to remind people that the "Fed will raise soon" talk makes no sense whatsoever now, even though the drumbeat was really loud just a couple of months ago.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says Rich Pzena has a different take on the value of the beaten-down financial sector.

If you think the world is coming to an end, you might as well read Rich Pzena's note from Pzena Investment's (NYSE: PZN) (Cramer's Take) earnings call -- he talks about how the world just might not be ending.

Rich has done excellent work his whole career and, in full disclosure, is a friend, and I don't seek out or have many friends on Wall Street. It makes the job -- telling the truth as I see it -- a little too hard.

Anyway, Rich has been wrong, or early, or whatever you want to call it, on the financials. Someone like Doug Kass, who has been dead right on the financials, might take umbrage to my even mentioning Rich's work, but Rich deserves respect for his unbelievably great work over the years.

I liked his conference call because no punches were pulled. He just admitted plain up that his quarter was awful, just terrible, as befits a money management company that invests in value, which now means the financials.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says improving macro trends were ignored Thursday.

Tough day.

I could tell from the way the bears gang-tackled the market at the end of the day that they were simply motivated, using all the futures and ETFs at their disposal, to knock down the market after its tremendous run.

They were backed by odd bedfellows: terrible earnings from Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) (Cramer's Take) and more miserable action in the big industrials -- action so horrid that you would actually think something was happening.

In truth, the oils are acting so poorly that they are freaking people out. I think we are in the "you can't have it both ways" moment where you can't hate it when the oils go up and hate it when the oils go down.

It's a big industry, and its coincident plays of ag and mining feel the pain, too. But oil's pain is now a real gain for everything from the transports to the soft goods. So there should have been a modicum of cheering.

The Street wasn't buying that pricing is up and margins are up courtesy of the collapse in oil, and that's a trend I suspect will continue.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says 30%-40% discounts have a way of bringing out the buyers.

Home prices in Stockton, CA are down 40%. In Daytona, FL, houses are priced at 30% discounts with amenities. The Inland Empire of California -- you name your price. That's how the madness ends: with huge price cuts, the way it ended in Bradenton, FL.

And believe me, we get more Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) money -- forget these darned covered bonds, let's just solve the problem. You get buyers after a year and a half that buyers went on strike.

Remember, while we can't live in stocks, we know they trade like houses, and when the first stocks to go down bottom, the others are not far behind.

With the new housing bill, the rate of foreclosures will go down and the bargains will be quite evident for those who want to take them. Either a new administration will remove the fear of the illegal immigrants from buying homes -- they were a huge part of the hard hit Arizona, Florida and California markets. Or the dramatic decline in inventory at the homebuilding level has given us breathing room.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says as long as there are other buyers of the paper, look for other similar deals.

Merrill's (NYSE: MER) (Cramer's Take) deal with Lone Star gives the first real stab of the private market value of this paper, 22 cents on the dollar. But when you add in the financing you can argue that it is about half that.

Why so low? Because even after a year and a half of stress, we still can't publicly value this stuff.

Remember the deal with Lone Star is a private one, where the investors have to wait five years for the paper to mature. We don't really know what a CDO is worth, you just know what they may have paid.

This is despite the fact that for years now, this stuff has existed, no one has come out and said "this CDO has a lot of Florida, so it is bad," or "this piece of paper has a 90% default rate," or "this debt is hindered by bad HELOC."

Without that info, we can't price it. Lone Star knows more than most, but basically had to put up very little. In this deal, Merrill said "here, we will pay you to take these off our hands."

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says don't blame the currency, it's all about supply and demand.

The dollar.

How often do we hear that this currency as the culprit of the m.o. of everything that the "sophisticated" types think is happening. It is almost conspiratorial:

• the Fed raises rates;
• commodity prices come in because they are a hedge against the weak dollar;
• oil fluctuates in price because of the dollar;
• the dollar controls stocks and bonds.

I am not an unsophisticated player. I recognize that the dollar has some importance when investing in strong currency countries and when the translation to the dollar occurs, a la the amazing results in a company like a Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) (Cramer's Take) or a Schering-Plough (NYSE: SGP) (Cramer's Take) or a H.J. Heinz (NYSE: HNZ) (Cramer's Take).

But the dollar and oil? Okay, I hear the intellectuals, but how about the empiricals: oil went from $119 to $148 while the dollar was steady against the Euro. Do the facts matter? What happens if they get in the way of the intellectuals' stories.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says KKR will join the list of buyout firms that fleece the small investor by going public.

Just what we need, a private-equity firm to go public. That worked just great with Fortress Investment (NYSE: FIG) (Cramer's Take), and it was terrific with Blackstone (NYSE: BX) (Cramer's Take). At least this one is some sort of reverse merger that might not inflict too much pain on the public.

Of course, folks in this business are displaying their usual lack of shame. It would be an excellent time for them to have a good reason beyond employee retention; I mean if you are making all of that money, what's the issue with retention? It would also be terrific if they were doing well, but there hasn't been a deal in so long that it would be a bit of an oddity if they were doing anything other than making a lot of fees.

But Kohlberg Kravis Roberts is a storied lot, so I figure the public will lap it up and all will be well until the losses start.

Or maybe this will be the one that's in the blue moon and the public will not be pants'd by the really smart bankers.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says we're back in the same predicament, and more bank runs could be the result.

No one did a deal. The financials rallied gigantically, there was tremendous enthusiasm, and yet no bank was ready with an offering. It is amazing, especially when you consider that the natural gas companies, like Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK) (Cramer's Take) and XTO Energy (NYSE: XTO) (Cramer's Take) were ready, despite horrible declines in their stocks.

The moment that Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) got through $20 or Merrill (NYSE: MER) (Cramer's Take) through $30 or Lehman (NYSE: LEH) (Cramer's Take) through $20, they should have peddled billions more in preferred stock or even common stock.

Just spot 'em right out there. For about a week, people decided the rally could - and would - last if these banks had built up some fortresses. They didn't.

And that's why we are back in the same predicament. I don't want to write here which bank is next to fail. There are enough of them (particularly one that just changed its CEO) that the FDIC will have to have a plan to keep the bad loans and sell the banks, maybe not even with the branches because all that's worth anything is the deposits.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the writing's on the wall, so position yourself accordingly.

If the ethanol mandate is scratched, what will that do to Potash (NYSE: POT) (Cramer's Take) and Mosaic (NYSE: MOS) (Cramer's Take) and Agrium (NYSE: AGU) (Cramer's Take)?

Here's the answer every hedge fund knows: It will not let you raise numbers in the out years.

Right now there is a tremendous struggle going on about near-term and far-term earnings growth and what we can expect to see. Everyone knows when Mosaic and Potash report next week that the numbers will be beaten and the estimates raised.

Everyone knows that the numbers will be far better than whatever drove Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take) up 80% in less than a fortnight, that doubled Wachovia (NYSE: WB) (Cramer's Take).

But so what? If you scrap the ethanol mandate or if people even think that it will be scrapped, you will see grains collapse just as quickly as oil collapsed when we found a level we didn't need it -- remember, we don't "need" ethanol, but it is mandated.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says these stocks will be killed today, and attentive investors can get them on the cheap.

Oh my, Costco (NASDAQ: COST) (Cramer's Take). I didn't expect that one. That's the best -- it's a shocker. I can't recall how many years it has been since I have seen the words "well below" and "Costco" together.

You can see how it happened: Costco held out. They didn't raise prices. Almost everyone else is raising prices and many are losing customers -- look at Safeway (NYSE: SWY) (Cramer's Take) or Supervalu (NYSE: SVU) (Cramer's Take). But two held out: Costco and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) (Cramer's Take).

When you lump in the ridiculous price hikes that Costco had to take in its gasoline business, you see that it simply wasn't making much money selling anything.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says they're not just the opposite of longs -- they have the power to destroy companies.

Today will be riotously ugly. Today's a day where you could take down a Capital One (NYSE: COF) (Cramer's Take) or a Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) -- some bad credit card exposure there -- off of American Express (NYSE: AXP) (Cramer's Take). You can bang down Nat City (NYSE: NCC) (Cramer's Take) into oblivionville off of it and hammer Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) (Cramer's Take) to the point where you could hear the rumors fly of capital needs. Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take), merciless Freddie, right at ya. Today's the day when the uptick rule would be the only friend to the notion of owning stocks without fear every minute, fear that they will break your stock. Today's the day that the uptick rule can save Lehman (NYSE: LEH) (Cramer's Take) from $14 or lower. Today's why we need it.

Yet, every time I do a piece that talks about the need to reinstate the uptick rule or enforce the naked short laws, I am immediately greeted with the same nonsense: why should the longs get protection the shorts shouldn't? In fact, other than the usual gang of two -- Patrick Byrne and David Patch -- I don't get any positive feedback on these pieces like the one I did last night on "Mad Money."

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the biotechs look sweet in a bank-led slowdown.

Thank you, New York Times. Remember just a couple of weeks ago, when The New York Times wrote about how Genentech's (NYSE: DNA) (Cramer's Take) Avastin was too expensive and the stock got cracked down to $77? I know Roche did. I bet that was the last draw. The dramatic decline in the dollar plus a sentiment that has spawned a thousand articles -- that life-saving drugs cost too much -- gave the Swiss giant a chance to bolster its own anemic pipeline by buying what may be the greatest wonder drug of all time in its $43 billion bid, no doubt the beginning price for what will ultimately be a deal close to $100 a share. (I pushed DNA hard here and on "Mad Money" because I have been a huge believer in Avastin and I'm confident that people will pay anything -- or family members will pay anything -- for the hope of three or four months or more of life, or the chance of beating cancer altogether.)

I don't even know where to begin about the positives of this deal. First, it confirms the general trend: the dollar is so weak that it is worth buying anything that's name-brand if you are from Europe, including Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD) (Cramer's Take), a total creature of the weak dollar.