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Yes, Yes, Yes. Jump in with both feet! Everybody's winning; Nobody's losing! Ignore the absolutes; just chase the thundering herd! Hurry or you'll miss out!

Cramer is fun and clever. The caveat here should be that the market has become an independent game of chance. It no longer leads anything. It is not an instrument for the longer term. Recently (and certainly now) the only long term instrument is cash, i.e., holding nothing but raw cash. Its value will accrue over any long term instrument. The "beating the number" of recent firms' reports has typically been a measure of unemployment growth -- i.e., the loss of consumers. Since even international firms exist only in national milieux, the cost of the vanishing laborer will be ultimately born by these firms. Hence, the longer term picture is profoundly bleak -- even dangerous. In the short term (getting in the market for a brief gain and getting out, limiting your time exposure) Cramer, more than most, can make you money. Buffet's position for example, (searching for good management, etc., for the long term) has become a very dangerous one. The market today is simply a one shot roll of the dice in fantasy land.

The problem is that the bottom didn't make any sense and the selloff to get to that bottom didn't make much sense either. It was all manipulated.

In order to make money you need to ride the wave of manipulation. It that sense every single dollar made in the stock market is illegitimate. It is exactly the same as stealing a person's wallet and taking a $20 out. The only effort it took to come out $20 ahead was to take it out of the guys wallet when he wasn't looking.

See I don't think you should be able to push a button at 9 AM and push a button at 4PM and come out thousands of dollars ahead. That doesn't create a viable economy. Sure it makes a few people rich but that doesn't do anything for the greater good of the economy. That just rewards risky behavior, because the riskier it gets the more the game pays out. This feeds the risk taking until the game is on the razors edge. One small mistake sends the whole thing over.

Is it wrong to say we should base our economy on the trade of payment for work. You tell someone you'll do a job for $100, you do the job and get $100. The person paying you decides whether or not the job is worth the money he will part with. The risk involved is based on the trust that the person will get the job done.

When you make money in the stock market you really didn't provide any good or service for that investment return. You didn't provide a service that added something to another persons life or to the economy. Sure you will be able to spend that new found money and that helps the economy move along. But where did that money come from?

If you bought a stock at $1 in march and sold it when the stock hit $10 in July, you increased your money by a factor of 10. The money didn't come from Ford, the actual company, because their profits were still in the toilet. You didn't stick around to collect a dividend. Your money came from the pocket of another person buying Ford at $10 a share because they think the stock will go higher. Your bet paid off but you really didn't really trade anything of value for it. You just took money out of the pocket of someone else. As long as the market keeps going up everything is fine. But that leads to overvaluations and bubbles. Eventually the money supply runs out and someone is left holding the bag.

Our economy is based on a money supply with no real value. We financed a boom with rapidly increasing home prices. You didn't work for the money or add anything to the house to make it more valuable. It just became more valuable as time moved forward. There was no real value, just a person that told you that you now have $100k in equity. Most people spent that cash with no real value and again everything was fine as long as the value kept going up. The problem is people did have to buy homes and most people couldn't afford them because the value increased far more than the growth of income.

See I'd rather have an economy that stays flat for 50 years than an economy the blows up and collapses as rapidly as a bullfrog's throat. A flat economy is a balanced economy, it means everything is good. The problem is that the extreme risk that leads to vast fortunes does not exist. I think we'd be far better off with a few hundred million people living comfortably than with a few hundred people living in opulence.

Maybe I'll never have a multimillion dollar fortune because I didn't risk it all in one play this past March, but I'm OK with that. I couldn't afford that risk because I have a family I have to pay for and I don't have a rich daddy of a mega billion $ trading house backing me up. I'm ok living within my means with a nice house a a decent car. As long as I can pay my bills and provide for my family I am fine.

What I have a big problem with is the people who took that giant risk that didn't pay off, bringing down the system causing me to worry about my ability to provide even though I was not even involved. Your market ruined the lives of millions who didn't even care about investing to make a fortune. They just wanted to go to work and live their life. Now millions of people have to worry about how they are going to put food on the table because the stock market went up based on money that was never there. Just valuation pulled out of thin air.

So go ahead Jim, tell everyone to get into the market and take that risk. Really you are telling them there is no risk. From what you said we have hit bottom and the only way to go is up. Tell them to use their last unemployment check and buy stock. Perhaps it is a smart thing to do the way the market looks right now. But if the past 20 years show us anything is is virtually guaranteed that person will lose everything if they keep the money there.

What a bunch of wussys.