I was one of those who felt that the government should have forced at least a half-dozen not-so-hot banks to get bought for little to nothing, but that didn't happen.

All of the banks were able to get a free pass the first time if they raised some money. The goal of the program, in case anyone remembers, was to see who would need money a second time because if you needed it again your management team would be replaced, and if you needed it a third time your bank would be forced to combine with another. Those were the informal orders that were given.

The emphasis was on stemming failure, not rewarding diligence.

Now we are through the stem-failure phase for a lot of these banks. They want out from under TARP, but we haven't even seen two or three quarters of earnings yet to tell if they would need a second dollop. Why in heck should we think that the money could be returned already, then? You can't go from testing to see if you should be closed to testing to see if you don't need more money.

Other than Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) (Cramer's Take), which doesn't need more money because it is not a holder of real estate mortgages, the others -- every one of them -- are questionable. They are, including JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) (Cramer's Take), calls on a turn in real estate. I think the bottom's being put in, but I don't blame the Treasury for wanting to be a little more sure of things.

I am tired of hearing "the rules have changed" and the government is "unreliable."

You bet the rules have to change; the fact that the government could even get what it has done right so far is pretty amazing. Any bank that hasn't gotten in trouble has no fear of the rules or them changing, and that's how we would like it to be if we were in business and we didn't screw up.

So take the bellyaching with a grain of salt. I believe that every single banker that is complaining that the rules have changed and it is harder to pay back TARP than they thought knows the real truth: They didn't raise enough money to do anything but survive. They just talk about TARP payback in order to show they aren't hobbled. All except Goldman Sachs, because while Goldman may have screwed up in some things, its biggest crime was its cohort, not its business.

Random musings: Speaking of how "poorly" the Federal Reserve and Treasury have done lately, did you see that the Fed's asset-backed loan program lent $11.5 billion last month? When this thing first started everyone pronounced it a joke. Or they said no one would do it because "the rules could change." Eleven billion in asset-backed loans that otherwise wouldn't have been made is a pretty good sign to me, and to everyone who criticized it as a stillborn failure, for that matter.

Jim Cramer is co-founder and chairman 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 was long Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.