Cramer: Things May Not Be As Bad As They Seem

Duck for Cover? Cramer Explains

Stocks closed at session lows after a midday rally failed, with mad Money host Jim Cramer.

Although stocks resumed the sell-off on Wednesday with the Dow Jones industrial average finishing down 519 points, Cramer said things may not be as bad as they seem. He added the market could go lower, though, and investors should be ready for further losses.

Yet there is concern on Wall Street that Europe is experiencing what the U.S. went through in 2008. The fear is that the destruction of a currency and of several major bond markets and many major banks could trigger another recession. Europe's problems are so much less murky than the U.S. was in '08, though, Cramer argued. He thinks Europe's issues can be pulled apart. Its challenges are fathomable in a way the U.S.'s weren't, which makes them easier to deal with. So the worst case scenario doesn't put us at Dow 6,500, where the U.S.'s problems sent us in 2008.

"Europe is simply not as bad as it looks," Cramer said. "Right now all the European politicians are on vacation. You have fourth stringers manning the press offices and the ministries, and you have to believe things will look better when the first string officials come back from the beach.

"A rerun of 2008? I just don't think it's likely, and while anything can happen, it's important to recognize that we are not always doomed to repeat the collapses of the past, and that, alas, the center will hold, and things can actually, with time, work out without the Western World coming undone for a second time in just three years."

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