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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.

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.