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TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says removing her from the FDIC would be a colossal mistake.

Don't kick out Sheila Bair! She knows the numbers. This morning, Bloomberg's reporting that Tim Geithner doesn't want Bair at the FDIC anymore because she is not a team player.

To which I say, "Thank heavens!" -- the team was terrible! These reports make her sound like Terrell Owens in the locker room -- a great player who is cancerous when going gets tough -- when it is actually the opposite: She is the franchise player to build around. When Indymac was seized (something I wish she had done earlier, but she waited as long as she could), she and her organization became the laboratory, the great central testing zone for what will work and what won't work to stem foreclosures, the root cause of all of our financial problems.

She was ignored, systematically ignored, even though she had the knowledge base. Both Geithner's organization and Treasury always thought the situation was either under control or could be controlled by top-down thinking: Give Wells (NYSE: WFC) (Cramer's Take) and Citi (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) and JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) (Cramer's Take) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take) some money, they will lend, it will trickle down.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says we're in a relentlessly terrible market.

Slew of bad news to wake up to. Freeport (NYSE: FCX) (Cramer's Take) eliminates its dividend to conserve cash as copper has had an unmitigated decline. Impairments coming; ugly, but somewhat predictable given the stunning stock drop. Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) (Cramer's Take) overnight becomes Nokia (NYSE: NOK) (Cramer's Take) or maybe even Garmin (NASDAQ: GRMN), (Cramer's Take) as the commoditization of tech continues apace. We can sell everything cell-phone-related off that. Tech down again.

Too bad, because it wrecks the rally from yesterday and confirms -- endlessly -- how bad this market is.

It's also too bad because China was up big last night, which I believe will put in a bottom to the mineral and steel market components someday. Pricing will get tight eventually as U.S. Steel (NYSE: X) (Cramer's Take) and Freeport are taking out a huge amount of capacity. They have to; the pricing falls are that devastating. There will be plenty of companies in these industries that simply won't survive because of the pricing.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the ECB, BOE and unemployment will determine whether we take out the November lows or not.

It's worldwide and it's deepening. We know that. It has transcended residential real estate, transcended commercial real estate. We know that too. The battlegrounds are now unemployment and rates that are too high worldwide because it is obvious we cannot pull ourselves out of this one.

That's why this week is unfortunately so crucial. It is going to be difficult to advance ahead of Thursday's European rate show and Friday's unemployment number, although the force of this market is to run ahead of these key numbers, not behind, as the dominant force remains short covering and these are events worth covering shorts for.

What do we need to see? We want full-point reductions in rates in England and Europe, something that seems pretty doubtful but are as necessary as they were in this country last year. We need to see China making a definitive plan to put millions of people to work in infrastructure projects that absorb gigantic surpluses in minerals. We need to see some risk-taking and some financing and some taking advantage of the, in some cases, absurd declines in stocks of companies like United Technologies (NYSE: UTX) (Cramer's Take) or Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) (Cramer's Take) or General Electric (NYSE: GE) (Cramer's Take), companies that tell us they have financing and can do things. We need to see the consumer spend, but, alas, that will simply not happen on any level we need if unemployment creeps to 10%.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says seasonality is finally working in our favor.

Here's a new one: I don't trust the futures, but this time on the downside. We could get giant cuts from Europe and the Brits this week and given that it is international trade that is weighing us down, I would think that the declines we all expect after that record-breaking advance last week will not be vicious and will be muted.

I think that we have to watch the Nasdaq again for tells. I'm sure that this time some people will say that gadgets didn't sink as low as we thought on Black Friday, which means a return to big glass screens -- Corning (NYSE: GLW) (Cramer's Take) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) (Cramer's Take) -- and perhaps once again hopes for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) (Cramer's Take) and for Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) (Cramer's Take).

There is also a newfound expectation that with all the money the Fed is printing, if you get any sign that Europe is willing to play ball, you are going to see the world trade stocks moving back up.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says you just can't be as negative as you were before the latest actions.

It's been right to be more than the average bear for months now. But if you believe that housing played some role in the downturn, then you have to believe that the latest moves are very meaningful for that trashed market.

We have had two major problems in housing: affordability and the ease and cost of mortgage money. We got news this week that ameliorated both difficulties, and we cannot sniff at them as much as it has paid to sniff at everything else that has been done.

First, the government's buy of GSE paper revives a moribund market and ends a lot of federal indecision. If you recall when the government confiscated the Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) preferreds and therefore made FNM paper more dangerous, the government at the same time said that it would make mortgage rates come down, presumably by buying a ton of Fannie/Freddie paper. Instead it made a half-hearted effort by buying about $25 billion in paper and then disappeared!

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says a quartet of fellows is at fault, including Geithner.

Well, I'll be. They are finally getting their hands dirty. Two new programs announced Tuesday are the most bold and, frankly, foolproof yet because they can't not work. The first, the buying of GSE debt, immediately took mortgage rates below 5%. In one day! That will, at last, trigger a huge wave of refinancing and a definite rush to buy homes for those who have been holding back. I reiterate that housing bottoms next year!

The second, needed to jumpstart the completely moribund asset-backed market, will allow you to buy asset-backed bonds that are guaranteed by the Treasury, meaning that you would be a fool not to borrow because you are buying risk-free bonds with much higher rates than Treasuries. How can that not work? How can you not want to lever up to buy them? At last we are totally interventionist with all stops being pulled out, no niceties. We are just printing money and giving it at a great rate to anyone who wants it.

One of the most exasperating elements of this financial era is the desire of the feds not to intervene in situations that demand intervention. There's a quartet of fellows at fault: New York Fed president and soon to be Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner; Chris Cox of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve; and Hank Paulson of Treasury.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says if the commodity were going to fall further, it would have done so by now.

Has natural gas hit bottom? One thing that has endlessly plagued this market is the belief that there is no bottom to oil or natural gas.

I think that we are seeing some stickiness in oil in the $50s. I am looking for that to be challenged and held today and tomorrow when inventories are broadcast. But more important, I think there is a place where natural gas is having trouble going down now because it is too cold. We are in the season where natural gas should have fallen more before it got here, because without some sort of unseasonably warm snap, we will now believe that nat gas is permanently above $5 and change, where a whole host of prudent companies, like Equitable (NYSE: EQT) (Cramer's Take) for yield and Ultra (NYSE: UPL) (Cramer's Take) for growth, make a lot of money.

We have more than a couple of ways to play this. Equitable has a decent dividend, one of the rare natural gas E&P companies with one of those. Equitable's finding costs are less than half the current pricing. The conservatives can play it with the Chesapeake (NYSE: CHK) (Cramer's Take) preferred; nice upside while you wait. Another way is Anadarko Pete (NYSE: APC) (Cramer's Take), run by industry stalwart Jim Hackett, who came on "Mad Money" recently and said that his company's oil and gas mixture is equal to about $10 a barrel but the stock is only at $37, and I suspect that it could go back to its $35 price if the oil futures stay this gloomy.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says now let's see the next moves from JPMorgan and Wells, because they're at a disadvantage.

How about this: We are better than we were Friday. That's right. Friday we left here knowing we had an oil-led futures-derived rally that simply wasn't sustainable because of the possibility Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) would fail.

Today, we know it won't.

That's better.

Of course, the question is why not have every major bank do this, have every major bank involved. The answer might be that there are no common stock dividends and we know that the government is basically nationalizing Citigroup, which makes it impossible to compete.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says if Citi is bailed out or bought and the autos get financing, we'd be given a chance to rally.

There was a time when I used to talk about the black holes and how if we got them fixed we could tackle the other problems from strength and not weakness.

When we last looked at the seven black holes only FordGMChrysler (collectively as one) and Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) remained.

The last two days of annihilation came right back to the inability to solve for those black holes.

Now much has gone wrong for the market since then. Leveraged loans have started to spoil and commercial mortgages have soured. The life insurance annuity issues, pressured by endless declines in the market, get worse by the day.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says comparisons will be so easy that companies with strong pricing will outperform.

These year-over-year declines in energy costs along with the inability of the Chinese market to fall much further are the two bright spots that long-term investing can give us. The notion that there are consumer-products companies that have put in price increases that for the most part are sticking and that the developing world could come back with lower rates, makes me feel that the Unilever (NYSE: UN) (Cramer's Take)/Procter (NYSE: PG) (Cramer's Take)/Colgate (NYSE: CL) (Cramer's Take) cohort could have a remarkable rally.

But not until after this current quarter, because the price decreases have been incredibly slow to come in and the dollar is so strong.

I key on those because frankly, oil looks like it is going to struggle to hold $50, and while that is a sure sign of a terrible recession coming, it is, alas, good news for the companies like Kellogg (NYSE: K) (Cramer's Take) and General Mills (NYSE: GIS) (Cramer's Take) that use energy and whose product pricing has held.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says eventually, the credit markets will thaw, and this one will take off like a rocket.

Cheap isn't always relative. Consider the case of Shaw Group (NYSE: SGR) (Cramer's Take), the infrastructure play with the nuclear bent that has tons of business around the world building nuke plants that are competitive with oil and nat gas even at these prices, but obviously are much better for the environment.

Shaw's doing great -- big order book, no cancellations or stretch-outs (unlike ABB (NYSE: ABB) (Cramer's Take) or McDermott (NYSE: MDR) (Cramer's Take)), and most important, its stock is trading a mere dollar and a half above its cash.

It's absurd, as the CEO told me last night on a pre-empted edition of the 6 p.m. "Mad Money." The valuation makes no sense.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the action in some of the banks and insurers is sickening.

They've gotten to the fortress banks. They have crushed everything financial because the word is out: No more bonuses and no more dividends if you take federal money under President Obama.

I don't know if it is true. But I sense from the action since the election that something big and bad is happening to the banks and the insurers. It looks like there is a quid pro quo developing and that quid pro quo is that if you want to get help from the government you are not going to get a bonus and you have to hurt your shareholders.

What else can the takeaway be for the way Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take) are acting? What else is there driving Prudential (NYSE: PRU) (Cramer's Take) and MetLife (NYSE: MET) (Cramer's Take)? These are big firms! Great firms!

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says everything depends on getting a deal done.

So what if GM NYSE: (GM) (Cramer's Take) hangs at the balance and the automakers don't sound like they are going to get a deal anytime soon. What matters, of course, are the futures! Today's futures action is brought to you by a combined Europe and Asia arithmetic session where Japan rallied and Europe is not down 3%. If Europe rallies at all we have a higher opening and all of this is ... totally fatuous.

Our market has decoupled from those others for the most part because we are in our own particular auto hell. We simply are not going to be the same economy if we are not bailing out the autos.

For the record, if it had to do with finance and discipline, I would just tell Cerberus, "You made a big mistake, nothing for you," and I would tell GM and Ford (NYSE: F) (Cramer's Take), "Time for prepackaged bankruptcies, and the feds will give you debtor-in-possession financing."

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says futures and ETFs are calling the shots, so nothing can be trusted.

OK, so let's see. Europe was up about half of what we were, which isn't bad given that we were up a little more than the day before, which puts us so we should probably be down about 1% ... but there are animal spirits that looked great yesterday, so we won't be down that much, so bid a half percent down from the close and then walk it up as we get closer (unless there is news).

There, that's the nonsense game I used to play in my head about what the buyers and sellers of futures were going to do.

It's pretty right.

It's pretty stupid.

It's pretty right and stupid because it is what we trade off of, but what we should be trading off of is whether we are going to save the automakers or whether there will be another run against Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) (Cramer's Take) or whether Citigroup's (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) insider buying is a joke or not. We should be betting on preannouncements and weakness and no ECB cuts, not on some ratio of Europe to us.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says analysts will assume the worst is over. They are quite simply wrong.

If the Nasdaq rallies today, please ignore it. If you recall our now totally ridiculous run up in the Nasdaq two weeks ago, a run spurred by numerous upgrades of semiconductor and semiconductor equipment companies by analysts who are always bullish no matter what the fundamentals are, you know that it was dead wrong.

Dead wrong. I said it at the time, but in this market the bulls don't give a darn because all of their work is based on "cheapness" and that you buy stocks at this stage of a recession because you know we are almost out of it.

These are lies.

Today Intel's (NASDAQ: INTC) (Cramer's Take) really cheap. Using a Warren Buffett analogy -- although he doesn't like tech, just GE (NYSE: GE) (Cramer's Take) and Goldman (NYSE: GS) (Cramer's Take), two "much easier to figure out companies" -- Intel's now genuinely cheap. But then again, I forgot that Buffett's always right -- see Doug Kass' column -- and those who say he is wrong are simply short-term trader types.