In other words, the dealer's got a face card and the bulls have 10s on top of sixes -- a real bad hand.

Here's the problem: What happens if the bulls draw a five? In other words, what happens if Ben Bernanke slows down his mortgage purchases, says that things are coming along nicely, and business does turn up of its own volition in the second half?

Let's think about this. It was real estate that brought us down. Real estate and corruption (lots of corrupt brokered mortgages, maybe a trillion dollars' worth, seem to be behind most of what we can't get out of). The residential has been written down to depression levels. The commercial? The commercial scares everyone to death, except the tenants who will cut good deals and the bondholders who, of course, will be screwed. But the bondholders, in aggregate companies such as Lincoln (NYSE: LNC) (Cramer's Take), Principal (NYSE: PFG) (Cramer's Take) and Hartford (NYSE: HIG) (Cramer's Take), can all raise billions in equity right now right here and get out of it. That's the five draw.

Or how about this? People are buying cars again, and we all take it for granted that it is "cash for clunkers." You know my feeling. We would fritter away a trillion dollars to cut noxious emissions by a nano-molecule, but $3 billion to raise the gas mileage? Who cares if it causes people to buy more cars than they were going to or pulls through orders? The White House should have sold it as a windmill program, then we'd stop talking about it and learn to love it.

Why is the presumption that we are all doing so badly sticking?

In fact, that same presumption is across the board. Think of it. We hear computer spending going higher, we think, "restocking." We hear apparel sales going up, and we think, "off of a small base." We hear car sales going higher and we think, "cash for clunkers."

We see semiconductor inventories depleting and we think, "Chinese government stimulus." We see steel prices climbing and production coming back on, and we think, "reckless lending by the Chinese." We watch oil going higher and we assume it is phony and not a sign of real demand (although the price is hostage to the pure number of tankers out there and can be manipulated easily either through tankers or Chicago), and of course, copper? China's ruthless stockpiling. The only true indicator of the economy? NATURAL GAS!

I don't know. I want to do ground-up stuff, and when I do that I don't get this kind of doom-saying. I urge people to read the commentary of the retailers reporting. They are simply not seeing the down-20% environment they should be seeing. They are also not seeing the retail vacancies they need to expand. They are not seeing the collapse of the consumer. They are not seeing an enfeebled consumer.

They are seeing a smart consumer who is hitting reset and buying value. And they are seeing that across the board, with the exception, somehow, of True Religion (NASDAQ: TRLG) (Cramer's Take) and Aeropostale (NYSE: ARO) (Cramer's Take), which frankly I have totally given up on understanding, and I have two teens and live next to ubermall of Short Hills so I don't think you can figure it out.

So here's my take: I don't think the butcher's bill from this garden-variety depression is going to set this country back as much as the consensus seems to think; I don't think that the Treasury's going to kill us with its needs. If I thought that, by the way, why aren't rates at 6% as I would have expected, and don't say "because the Fed is buying mortgages," because that's nonsense.

In the early 1980s I remember buying 14% Treasury bonds for Leonard Miller, the founder of Lennar (NYSE: LEN) (Cramer's Take), the great homebuilder, as well as for a wealthy Republican party financier whose name it is nobody's business but mine and his to reveal. The latter wanted 10 million bonds, when 10 million was, well, something more than a bad house in Southampton. I tried to explain to them the lasting effects of the worst president ever, Jimmy Carter (that's saying something considering some of the worthless curs who have resided at the White House). I tried to explain to them that they were taking on too much risk and they would be on their own. They refused to listen to reason. I made sure compliance knew that these were not "discretionary" orders so I wouldn't get in trouble when they backfired.

They drew fives on top of six-king.

That draw may be a sucker's bet. But it was an informed sucker's bet, for certain. Which is why I stay at the table, sixes in the deck, or not.

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 had no positions in the stocks mentioned.