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If you break the cycle of short-and-no-cover, you can win.

I know that wasn't the purpose of the Anglo-French plan that we were dragged into, but it will be the effect, and the effect will be electric.

Let's just take an obvious example: State Street (NYSE:STT). This is a longtime conservative trust bank that is an important custodian for life savings and for mutual funds. For a year now it has been under assault as an institution that has too much leverage in hard-to-value asset-backed instruments. The idea that a custodian could fall apart is something that shakes every money manager to his core and causes him to take his money out of cash and put it in T-bills. That's been going on for ages now, and I know money managers who are scared to death to keep their money "in the system," which is State Street, something that instills panic across the board.

When you hear that and you are a short-seller you know what to do: You plunk down $25 million to buy credit default swaps to wager against the firm's debt, then you buy position limit puts and then you short the stock along with all of the other like-minded souls you talk to every day. You get the stock rolling downhill, then you buy a second set of swaps, paying double the price -- doesn't matter what the vig is when you know you are going to win -- and then you call the media and you tell them that everyone's pulling their money out of State Street and the credit default swaps are spiking huge and then the media goes out and reports on it. The company is helpless to refute it as the problem is being caused by the sellers because it is pretty much business as usual in a very tough time, and the stock gets hit again. Other hedge funds get wind, they short it down further, longs panic and then the credit agencies put the company on notice because where there is smoke there must be fire. Then the clients pull as much money out as possible and voila, the end of State Street.

We have seen this run several times. Frankly, I don't know how State Street stayed in business.

Until this morning, the only policy that had been put in place to stop this destruction of capital by the shorts -- and I fully concede that State Street may have made mistakes, but I will not concede that those mistakes should have made it be wiped out -- was an out-and-out short-selling ban. That was ludicrous, but what do you expect from this SEC that eliminated the uptick rule right in the teeth of the greatest bull market and allowed naked shorting to go on illegally?

Finally, a plan that isn't elegant and dreamed up by a Federal Reserve that doesn't want to do anything but behind-the-scenes liquidity injections that have failed miserably and auction facilities that have done nothing.

Now, we just let the government own big stakes in banks in return for money and a pledge that they won't hoard it but lend it.

The European plan is simple: Give money to the banks, take shares back, and start the process over. If you graft that on the American plan to allow banks to sell bad real estate loans then you get a fighting chance to stabilize the system.

This scheme is a heck of a lot better than all of the little things that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has wanted to do to keep banks in business, and it also gives the banks a bridge before TARP kicks in.

Of course, it is pure socialism, so I suspect that somehow our government will screw it up in the name of laissez-faire free-market principles. But we are way too far along to quibble. I also expect that it will be perceived as a bank bailout, to which I say, again, "So what? We have spent more than a trillion dollars trying to avoid one and that hasn't worked."

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the safety theme will come back if only because these companies' earnings will be good in six months.

Editor's note: Jim Cramer will present his 2009 stock outlook for the first time at TheStreet.com Investment Conference on Saturday, Oct. 25. Click for details.

Now they come after the Procter & Gambles (NYSE: PG) (Cramer's Take) and the General Mills (NYSE: GIS) (Cramer's Take) and the like, betting that the action will be better in the cyclicals with all of this money being printed worldwide.

Commodities are also coming back because of reflation. And we have to feel that many of the infra and ag names are finally sold out by the hedge fund redemptions.

Here I am speaking of a Freeport McMoRan (NYSE: FCX) (Cramer's Take), with its good yield and a belief that the hedge funds are at last done.

I don't buy it. I like a balanced portfolio, but I want to buy the GIS/PG all the way down because we are going into a recession, not going out of one. These companies pay dividends, raise dividends and have great commodity tailwinds.

Colgate's (NYSE: CL) (Cramer's Take) down a lot too, and I am liking that one.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says that as in '87, nothing seems to work, whether it's the rate cut or positive technical readings.

This market is so much like 1987, it freaks me out. In that market, in the week leading up to the crash and the crash week itself, you would enter an order to buy a stock when it was up 2, get the report that you bought it up 3, and then it would be down 2. That's exactly what happened with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) (Cramer's Take) today. Exactly.

In that market you felt ripped off like you wouldn't believe. Every day. You would try to buy when the market sold off and never get the low or even lower prices, and you would feel like you could do nothing right.

It ground you up and spit you out. In that market you would get good news, and it would last long enough to draw you in, and then it would spit you out -- like Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) (Cramer's Take).

Now, I have to admit that I thought the market would finish up today. I figured it almost had to, because in the end it is still a big deal that we got a coordinated cut, even if it wasn't bigger.

Didn't matter.

I also figured that with credit markets actually beginning to thaw -- and I am talking about what Tony Crescenzi talks about -- we could catch a break. And the trade where hedge funds hedge their individual stock names with and S&P future shorts, the one Doug outlined, should have been good for more of a squeeze than we got. That seemed like a reasonable reason to go up, not to mention the minus 10 reading on the oscillator and only 25% bulls.

You didn't get those kinds of readings very often in the last 20 years and not bounce.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says you can use the bounce today to sell names with earnings troubles.

A suggestion: If you know that your company has earnings problems, you are going to get a lift today that will allow you to get out at a better price. What do I mean about earnings problems? Let's consider Alcoa (NYSE: AA) (Cramer's Take). That was a dismal quarter. The stock would not be up if it weren't for the rate cuts.

Or how about the financials? We learned last night that MetLife (NYSE: MET) (Cramer's Take) needed a lot more capital. We have to presume all insurance companies need more capital. So get ready or sell and buy lower. Citigroup (NYSE: C) (Cramer's Take) is in the same boat. It is not going to have a good quarter and it needs to do a capital raise. You are going to get a terrific opportunity to sell today.

I also feel the same for most retailers. We have to be very careful here because unless you are in a retailer that picks up share in hard times, you need to use the strength to sell.

What can be held? I think that you can keep the stocks with good dividends that are able to pay them. You can certainly buy stocks that are trading near their cash.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the end-of-day bounce was just shorts afraid of a worldwide rate cut.

The shorts must have just gone on "ease watch." You can tell what that is. Some devastating news will come out, say, about once-proud Royal Bank of Scotland (NYSE: RBS) (Cramer's Take), some ratings downgrade, and boom, Britain is hit for a full percentage point decline. Then, as if by magic, it rallies almost back to unchanged as the shorts don't want to be hung before worldwide rate cuts.

I always thought this behavior was curious because I don't know of a short-seller who thinks that intervention even matters, or says it doesn't matter, for that matter!

In fact, though I think it can matter not so much to our country, it does matter to those countries in Europe that really would be doing well if money weren't so tight. Our markets lost a ready source of cash and business when Europe went away, particularly upon the disappearance of China from the world's economies.

Now, of all of the new measures I like hearing, the commercial paper intervention is intriguing as the government substitutes itself for buyers for this important funding. But again, I come back to the notion that we can't really be two sides of everything, can we?

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says he's not buying here, because prices are going even lower.

Here it is, the dawning of the selloff that will finally put us at levels where ... we will sell off again.

For two years the credit markets have been submerged under central bank happy talk and a sense that the worries were about inflation. You can see why in the outlines of the institutions that are failing now.

The problem is the Europeans got stuck fighting the inflationary war that ended in July. Rates are ridiculously high in Europe vs. the crunching of debt that is happening and will continue to happen.

In our country, the "Fundamentals are Sound" group at Treasury, and the "Whip Inflation Now" group at the Federal Reserve couldn't switch fast enough either.

But boy, are they great at public relations. There has been remarkable awe at how well Treasury, the Fed and the FDIC are handling the crisis.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says too much time has passed, too many institutions are out of cash.

When we say "too big to fail," what we mean is an entity that has so many tentacles in so many parts of the economic superstructure that if it failed, the consequences would be too grave for the system itself.

With the demise of Lehman, we at last see what it is like to have something too big to fail, fail. That's why you can see every insurer go down in the beat of an eyelash, or every broker roll over with lightning speed. It is how you could see commercial paper lines frozen and how you could expect money funds to crater and break the buck.

Lehman was twice as big as Bear and much more far-reaching. It was the other side of the trade, we are discovering, for myriad financial players. Its paper pervaded the system and was seemingly owned like U.S. government paper was. It was levered against and it was priceless collateral that is, well, priceless collateral. It did things with your margin account to gain you a return that reduced your cash to unsecured status.

In short, Lehman may bring down the Western financial world. That's right, it might. Almost everything you are seeing since Lehman's demise can be traced directly or indirectly to Lehman.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says he doesn't want to make a move until he sees the action.

We aren't oversold enough anymore, and we are up too much. Meanwhile, the next run is on the insurers, as we can tell from the erratic nature of the way that group is trading.

Oh, and what's the deal with Sallie Mae (NYSE: SLM) (Cramer's Take)?

There's not a lot of respite here in part, again, because of Lehman and the default of so much Washington Mutual paper.

We just aren't ready for what is happening yet, and we keep getting surprised about where the paper is. The rescue bill will help, but the pork attachments are so horrible that I believe, ex-FDIC, they have made it tougher to pass, not easier.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says if you're short, you don't want the bill passed. Let's look at that perspective.

First, let's make an important point: Nothing from Congress is going to make this market go up. We need the market go up because it is cheap and it attracts buyers, and because there are companies out there that are worth more than they are trading at -- perhaps as private companies, perhaps as investments right now, if anyone had cash and confidence.

Right now it seems there is neither. All we have are the futures, on stocks and on oil, and they bounce around and we do what they tell us at the start. Then the hedge funds come in and start selling because of their broken models and their redemptions. Then the short-sellers come in and figure out ways to knock down things. Then the rumors start about another bank failure and then we go down.

I want to break that spiral because I own stocks. If I am short stocks, I love the spiral.

Now, the bill in Congress does not break the spiral by any means. What breaks the spiral is a sense that the system is not falling apart, which it most certainly is.

Anything that could help break that spiral is encouraging. Consider that we had the equivalent of Pearl Harbor -- the collapse of so many banks -- and now we need an effective response, which must be massive and persuasive.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the rejected bill was about rescuing credit markets, not rescuing Wall Street.

So what if the plan would have benefited some fat cats? Everything's always going to benefit fat cats. That's how things work, unless you want a Leninist or Maoist society.

What people needed to care about were the 90 million families who own stocks and the millions of people who are about to get kicked out of their homes who had a hope to be able to refinance with someone from the government rather than a collection agency.

You want bailout? Fannie (NYSE: FNM) (Cramer's Take) and Freddie (NYSE: FRE) (Cramer's Take) were bailed out. AIG (NYSE: AIG) (Cramer's Take) was bailed out. Those directly helped some of the wealthiest people and nations in the world. The AIG bailout could cause the U.S. government hundreds of billions of dollars, because of credit default swaps. Those were bailouts.

This package was about stopping home price depreciation before it hit 40%, 50%, 60%. It was about the private sector being able to buy failed banks, not the public sector, which is what will now have to happen.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says Apple is showing us that there's very little safety in this tumultuous market.

Too little too late? For some, yes. For Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) (Cramer's Take), yes. For Wachovia (NYSE: WB) (Cramer's Take)? Maybe.

For Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) (Cramer's Take)?

Oops, that's the problem: The earnings are no good. We sit here and fret about European property banks that were just these blips on our early-morning screens -- Fortis? Hypo? B&B -- what the heck, I didn't even know they were important. We follow their bailouts and we wonder how in heck did we do this to them? Did we? Did they have Lehman trouble? Who didn't have Lehman trouble?

And then Morgan Stanley downgrades Apple and we get a bunch of retail downgrades and then we realize that we are in uncharted earnings and assets waters.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says without the Paulson plan, every component is in trouble. Let's take a look.

Without the Paulson plan, or if the plan is so watered down and delayed, I have been saying all bets are off and we could be in for a huge swoon. How huge?

I like to sit down and noodle on the actual components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average to give you a real sense of what can go wrong. And there is so much going wrong. The credit markets are vanishing, the earnings are vanishing and the only hope is a plan that ignites credit markets, forces money off the sidelines and gets this economy and the worldwide economy moving again.

Not long ago, I postulated that this market is literally repealing all of the moves since the Brazil-Russia-India-China emergence that gave us better markets to sell into than just the U.S. With the collapse of Chinese growth -- they have simply ceased to be importers since the summer -- the inflation in India, the war in Russia and a U.S.-led slowdown in Brazil (although that remains a robust market) BRIC is more like having a brick around your neck than a wind at your back.

Meanwhile, the peak in energy and the collapse of the financial system have left both of those groups in disarray with valuations simply too difficult to pin down, so you retreat to worst-case scenarios where you can at least find some terra firma -- mainly where stocks were last time things were this bad.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the bank will be ready if the bailout plan is approved. If not, only BofA makes sense.

So what happens if we get the deal? What occurs? Will we see immediate deals? I think it depends on the accounting.

If an acquiring bank were to buy Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) (Cramer's Take), say, without any assurances that those mortgages can be written down to where they can be flipped, the acquirer would be committing suicide.

That makes Washington Mutual just a so-so bet, although its $300 billion in deposits make it a terrific target. Put it this way, the FDIC will own WaMu in a week without the plan, and that will be mighty ugly for the FDIC. But it could happen anyway, given how bad the WaMu loan process was.

Instead, I think the focus will be on Wachovia (NYSE: WB) (Cramer's Take) because I believe Bob Steel has the best handle on what the process will look like. I think he is ready to dump his bad bank on the government in return for a stake by the government in it and then his good bank can thrive. I think that Wachovia goes from a dicey situation to one of the best ones.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says he at least recognizes value when he sees it.

Warren Buffett is not an idiot. He has kept his powder dry through all of this madness and suddenly, within one week, he has opened his coffers and picked up not one, but two multi-billion-dollar steals, Constellation Energy (NYSE: CEG) (Cramer's Take) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) (Cramer's Take).

These investments are the first sign that someone, some grown-up, is coming in from the sidelines, not because he has been talked into something that he doesn't want to do or understand -- which has been the case in all of the other bank financings -- but because he sees a delicious rate of return that will be hard to take away now that he has put his balance sheet to work, one of the last with any firepower to make a difference.

First, Constellation. Here's a perfectly good utility that, because of its business model, needs capital to work. It made several miscues that brought it to its knees -- a business that is a regular, good generator of income gone bad because of financing. I have no idea how low it would have gone, but as long as it was intact, it was worth a lot more than it was selling for to someone who has financing, and that's what Buffett has in spades. He stole the company.