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Joe Nacchio and the Conservative Inv...   Rupert Murdoch: Probably Posturing
Jul 30 2007 9:14PM EDT

Great Moments in Punditry: Jim Cramer on Housing

If I have any ambitions of being a financial pundit, should I try to come up with stuff like this, from Jim Cramer?

Just some of the Cramer gems there:

"I'm looking for 100% default on the 2-and-28s. One hundred per cent. The bears are looking for 50%. I'm saying that they're foolish and that they're way too optimistic."

"I'm not distinguishing any more between subprime and prime. That's a meaningless distinction. When your house drops 20% in value, then it doesn't matter whether you're subprime or prime. It's better to walk away, even if you're wealthy, because you don't want to lose your credit card, and you don't want to lose your car. Your house is the one thing that's fungible. It's smart to walk away... If your home declines 20% in value, it's really important to walk away from it."

"I'm calling for a dramatic decline in home values... If the Federal Reserve were to cut rates by one full point, things would just reverse dramatically, and everything would go up in value... Until then, we're going to be in what I believe now is a total crisis."

Is it worth responding to this as though it's rational? Is this what passes for informed commentary on TV these days? I can see how it gets ratings, in a train-wreck kind of way – hell, I'm blogging it. But the idea that wealthy people will stop paying their mortgages because their houses are "fungible" (unless we get a 100bp cut in the Fed funds rate, of course) – it's like some kind of incredibly unfunny parody. Nouriel Roubini et al might be shrill, but at least there's coherent logic to their position.

What scares me is that this could be a rare and genuine glimpse into how traders actually think. In which case the Great Moderation and decline in volatility of recent years is doomed to die a sudden and extremely unpleasant death.

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