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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.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the value creation at both companies is astonishing and not going away, despite the market trend.

Every now and then days like yesterday happen. Days where it is so crazy, where the selling never ends and the buying never ends. Where the sellers just keep reloading and the buyer just keep buying.

Some of it seems like short-covering panic and some of it seems like sellers who can't take the pain anymore. As I watched Cabot Oil & Gas (NYSE: COG) (Cramer's Take) -- a very good company, a company that priced a gigantic piece of merchandise 30% higher a fortnight ago -- go down more than 10% today, I am astonished at the market's inefficiency.

When I see Nucor (NYSE: NUE) (Cramer's Take) decline 10% on a good quarter and conservative guidance, I marvel at how ridiculous things are. Sure, you can say if you look at a three-year chart, "This is the end of the bubble." But how about value? How about the fact that COG is making much more money than it ever has and is unlikely, given the big shift toward natural gas, ever to make as little money as it did a few years ago?

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says if we get fed support for a housing bottom, we can really turn things around.

If I were at Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) (Cramer's Take), today would be a day where I issued several billion in preferred stock or I issued a multibillion equity offering. Why? Because the deed is done; the shorts panicked and covered and took the stock up where it could now be worth doing a deal.

If things are so great at WFC, why do they have to do a deal? Simple: They have a big increase in nonperformers, and when you have a big increase in nonperformers ,you raise capital. Period.

Yesterday's relief rally was not about housing prices bottoming -- I think that will happen next year, not this year -- it was about getting the shorts. The shorts had had their way all over everything. Suddenly you get this surprise smackdown by Chris Cox of the so-called naked shorts -- it's really not at all about that if these stocks aren't hard to borrow -- and you get a dividend boost, something that shorts don't like to pay.

I think today's "upside surprise" from JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) (Cramer's Take) will generate more short-covering. So will Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take) when it declares its dividend.

Which it will.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says when the dust settles, we'll notice the reduced equity here, and stocks will rise to reflect it.

Do corporate balance sheets matter? One of the things that you will see in the next few weeks is everyday industrial companies brimming with cash. You are going to see buybacks of huge proportions. Companies like Deere (NYSE: DE) (Cramer's Take) and Parker-Hannifin (NYSE: PH) (Cramer's Take) and Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT) (Cramer's Take) are swimming in cash. United Technologies (NYSE: UTX) (Cramer's Take), Emerson (NYSE: EMR) (Cramer's Take), huge. Every drug company, big. Almost every major tech company from Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) (Cramer's Take) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (Cramer's Take) to Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) (Cramer's Take) and Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) (Cramer's Take). Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) (Cramer's Take), which just reported, has a monster amount of cash. (Eaton (NYSE: ETN) (Cramer's Take) will soon, after the smoke clears.)

I know it doesn't matter at all. Right now we are so stuck on the banking problems and on the companies bleeding from higher energy prices that nobody cares about all of this cash, which will be used to shrink equity. They won't care because the banks, brokers and homebuilders, and the hobbled companies that use oil, have to issue so much equity that you can't see the effect of the equity shrinkage. But it will eventually matter. It has to matter that Deere has taken out 10% of its stock in the last four years. It does matter that Black & Decker (NYSE: BDK) (Cramer's Take) has eliminated almost 20% of its equity. Emerson's taken out 5%, same with Boeing (NYSE: BA) (Cramer's Take). There's just a huge amount of equity being shrunk.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says our problems are so widespread, he sees lots more IndyMacs before we're out.

You don't need me to tell you it's awful out there. You don't need me to tell you that there's no quick fix for any of these things. But what might help you understand why it feels so bad this time is that I have never, in my career, seen so many companies go off track at the same time. This is one unbelievable moment, and it is made more horrible by the day as companies' stocks just get pummeled, causing people to then question the very viability of the companies involved.

First, obviously, are Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take). We don't know what will happen, but we do know that their futures are much darker than their pasts. Their best hope: a Democrat becomes president and shows the usual love to both. But as investments, they are pretty much perma-losers going forward. The losses are that heavy. Yes, it is true that two years from now they will be better, but will the government let them limp through to that? View them as calls on a Democratic win.

We all know that Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take), Wachovia (NYSE: WB) (Cramer's Take), Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) (Cramer's Take) and National City (NYSE: NCC) (Cramer's Take) are in trouble. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take) says it isn't in trouble, but obviously the market doesn't believe management because the stock failed to rally when it said its dividend was safe. Any short-selling hedge fund could hire 30 actors and have them line up at a Washington Mutual or two and get a bank run going. Then we would have to hear about a "hasty" Treasury department plan to bail out WM. Hasty? How can these guys not see it coming?

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the news on Fannie and Freddie is great, but we still have earnings looming ahead.

Chance to sell? Every time has been a chance to sell. Every big futures lift. I struggle to think how this time will be different. In 24 hours, the Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) fiasco will be behind us. Instead we will be faced with more earnings, and the earnings, while conceivably not horrid -- how bad can Intel's (NASDAQ: INTC) (Cramer's Take) be given the destruction of AMD (NYSE: AMD) (Cramer's Take)? -- won't be great, either. The bulls' best hope is a rally that was put off from Friday after GE's (NYSE: GE) (Cramer's Take) good numbers that showed lots of businesses doing well.

All last week I was picking at stocks, trying to build positions in names I like on the way down.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says Fannie and Freddie aren't the true culprits here.

The blowhards and bluff artists and the Gang of Four -- Ambac (NYSE: ABK) (Cramer's Take), MBIA (NYSE: MBI) (Cramer's Take), MGIC (NYSE: MTG) (Cramer's Take) and PMI (NYSE: PMI) (Cramer's Take) -- truly have blood on their hands for this moment. So do the ratings agencies, the mortgage insurers and the salespeople who packaged undocumented loans and pushed buying homes with no money down.

The whole apparatus stinks and we are now seeing the unwinding, but I think that the false assurances created by the Gang of Four and their insistence to not worry made everyone way too complacent. Their glib promises as well as the incredibly lax work of the ratings agencies, S&P and Moody's, enabled the whole edifice to be propped up.

And once it was clear to them that they needed more capital, they chose to forgo the window and attack the shorts. Had they raised the capital they needed and had the ratings agencies said they can't bless any more of this junk, we might have never been in this spot.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says its stunning buy of Rohm & Haas will get people thinking about an energy top.

Just when you thought it was safe to short anything, particularly anything with any commodity exposure, Dow Chemical (NYSE: DOW) (Cramer's Take) comes along and inexplicably pays a gigantic amount of money, $78 in cash, for Rohm & Haas (NYSE: ROH) (Cramer's Take)? My first thought was that it must be a joke. That is inconceivable. A hoax. Something perpetrated by frustrated longs to spook the shorts.

I mean, a chemical company? Two chemical companies? Ground Zero for slowing economic activity and raw costs? People unsure if Dow could even pay its nearly 5% yield? I mean, even last night on my show, I made fun of the idea that people are confusing Becton Dickinson (NYSE: BDX) (Cramer's Take), a medical supply company, with a chemical company because it uses resin.

Amazing.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says they still don't know the score, but they're aware of the need for a financial game plan.

At least the fundamentals are no longer sound. That was my takeaway from the two speeches given by our slow-to-understand government chieftains -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke -- in their back-to-back soothing onslaught.

The short-sellers sure didn't like what they heard. They heard that the government might stand at the ready if things keep rolling over. There was a moment when Hank Paulson praised Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) for the capital it has raised -- about a week's worth of reserves, one quipped -- and there was a sense that the term facility's extension would be the difference-maker for a Wachovia (NYSE: WB) (Cramer's Take) or a Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take). It sure wasn't a decline in loan losses that had them going.

I come back to the same thing. Unless the government says, "Look, examiners, ignore everything, because we can't have total chaos," and unless the stocks rally so much that they can do meaningful fund raises, Paulson and Bernanke don't have the horses to do the job. Their work yesterday was made easy by an oil future decline that triggered an S&P increase.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the GSEs as we know them have to die before we can move forward.

At last, we have now found our own Resolution Trust Corporation for this era of overbuilding. In fact, we have two of them: Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take). That's right, we know they are both out of capital, and unlike the ne'er-do-well banks -- almost all of which seem now slated to disappear in one giant bear-market orgy -- there are no saviors.

The dissolution of these two companies is the height of irony. President Bush made it his sub rosa mission to end the hegemony of these two Democrats-in-waiting companies. I don't even think he understood what the guarantee was or what they were supposed to do. That would take a lot of time to figure out. He probably just said, "We have banks, good banks, like Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) (Cramer's Take) and Countrywide; why do we need Fannie Mae, which just makes money for the Democrats?"

So, over a multiyear scheme, he hamstrung the agencies and let the private banks take over lending and securitizing pretty much anything, because homeownership was another one of his themes, of course, aided by the Fed's insistence that exotic mortgages, especially weird adjustable types, made the most sense.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says beyond the long tradition, it's what we need now as a nation.

How did "bailout" become such a curse? The U.S. has a long history of bailouts, the big ones being most successful. The U.S. government saved Lockheed (NYSE: LMT) (Cramer's Take) in 1974 -- we need all the competition in military procurement we can get, considering how precious little of it there is -- so it's hard to judge that one a loser. The feds profited from the Chrysler bailout five years later .Not just profited, but had a huge success. The Mexican bailout in the 1990s saved that country's financials and gave the U.S. a tidy profit. The Resolution Trust bailout worked perfectly in restoring the banking system at a small cost, in retrospect, to the chaos we could have had.

Yet here's JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) (Cramer's Take) taking on a lot of risk, in retrospect, given the junk nature of Bear's portfolio, and there's a tremendous amount of hand-wringing about it?

I say get used to it. General Motors (NYSE: GM) (Cramer's Take) and Ford (NYSE: F) (Cramer's Take) can't cut their way out of their jam, not with the F Series down 40% and GM still paying more for its labor force than it thought would have to. Both have strong, salvageable franchises, but they need capital, a la Chrysler in 1979. I think the feds should give it to them with contingencies that allow the U.S. to profit from any rebound.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says he has no confidence in these hated names, and neither should you.

The financials are flying -- there are finally bids for most of them underneath. Many, including Lehman (NYSE: LEH) (Cramer's Take), are running. What a great time to put the negative cards on the table and put the negatives in perspective. That's right, let's look at the financial Achilles' heels. What could go wrong? In other words, here's the companion piece to Doug Kass' positive conversion. Here's what I am worried about even as Doug thinks everyone's too worried and the bottom is being put in.

To get started, let's look at what's not causing the endless declines in the stocks -- don't worry, we will get to the financial dirty dozen when I finish this preamble.

First, it ain't earnings. Earnings aren't going to be that great. But that's why the S&P is at 14 times. It can go to 12 or 11, or most likely stays at 13-14, but the E goes down (earnings).

Second, it ain't oil. The stocks sensitive to the increase in oil have room to go down, but the price of oil is being factored in slowly but surely.

Third, it isn't inflation or recession. Those two are being baked in each day.