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No, it's balance sheets and the plight of the common equity. There are simply too many companies in trouble all at once to let us leave this morass behind us.

Specifically, there are 12 companies that are on my watch list as potential disasters that could wreck the market further. These are companies I have NO CONFIDENCE IN WHATSOEVER, and they must be on everyone's screen. They are what could imperil this market.

So, drum roll, please ...

1. Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take): Here's a company that is in so much trouble that I can't even begin to figure out how to fix it. There was a moment that it could have been unwound, but now your best hope is that it goes to $5 or $6 and we realize it could fail and we let the Saudis bail it out. Don't laugh -- that's the 1990 scenario. Pathetic that history repeats itself, but this is the worst-run major bank in the world. You get what you pay for. A dividend cut is next.

2. General Motors (NYSE: GM) (Cramer's Take): Merrill says what I thought was obvious when I said it the other day -- this one makes too much sense as a bankruptcy. Wrong cars, wrong balance sheet, one of the worst mortgage writers. Sold to you. Dividend cut needed. (Ford (NYSE: F) (Cramer's Take) doesn't have the miserable mortgage business so I am not including it in the dirty dozen).

3. Lehman Brothers: I, too, once blamed the speculators. But I now feel that the CFO firing put an end to that. This company has very little earnings power, and it has very great exposure to mortgages worldwide. It has minimal disclosure. We need a takeunder to remove it from the critical list.

4. Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) (Cramer's Take): Without a sale of BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) (Cramer's Take) or Bloomberg, more equity is needed. Nobody wants to put up equity for this one. We still have no disclosure on the last-in-no-out mortgages they wrote. Black box. I don't want to buy a black box. Dividend cut? Good question.

5. Wachovia (NYSE: WB) (Cramer's Take): Rudderless, knee-deep in unreserved California mortgages, still writing the lowest-quality mortgages as recently as Monday! Totally unacceptable. Rumored to be bought -- yeah. At under 10. Urgent dividend cut.

6. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take). They bought a company that could be shut down by indictments -- it has billions and billions of going-bad mortgages. Who the heck would want that? If BAC hadn't bought it, does anyone think it would still be alive? They swallowed the Love Canal when they drank from this well. Dividend cut needed, now.

7. Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) (Cramer's Take): People are talking about a bottom; I am talking about a company that has the worst collection of mortgages out there, the least verified, the worst quality, with a private-equity firm that will take your equity and crush it. Five-dollar lottery ticket. Nothing more.

8. Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take): Someone has to take the hit for this market. Some government entity has to bail out homeowners. It will be this one, and see No. 9. Dividend cut needed pronto.

9. Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take): see No. 8.

10. AIG (NYSE: AIG) (Cramer's Take): Frightening lack of transparency despite their endless attempts to say they are transparent. I think they are on the hook to the monolines and vice versa. Big London book. They need to eliminate that just-raised dividend. Pathetic lack of knowledge of their own book.

11. Cerberus: They are so confident it is scary. They can get away with it -- they are private. But it would be really frightening to read that they are running out of money.

12. The Gang of Four -- PMI (NYSE: PMI) (Cramer's Take), MGIC (NYSE: MTG) (Cramer's Take), MBIA (NYSE: MBI) (Cramer's Take) and Ambac (NYSE: ABK) (Cramer's Take): We all know what's happening here -- their insurance might be busted. So many outfits are still valuing their portfolios presuming some insurance protection that when the inevitable happens, we will get a severe hit to everyone's book.

As I mentioned earlier, we are getting some templates -- CIT (NYSE: CIT) (Cramer's Take) -- and some sense of urgency from the government, but not enough yet to make a difference. We need housing depreciation to stop, then the list would go from being Do Not Resuscitate to simply being grave.

But this is your list. Follow it; it is what's ailing this market.

Everything else is just an earnings sideshow.

Random musings: I did a list of the dirty dozen subprime mortgage names last year. Suffice it to say that the damage was unfathomable. The Fed did know nothing. Fortunately, the Fed still has ammo to bring the funds rate down to 0.5. Unfortunately, they switched directions on us.

Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.