On Thursday, Cramer had a theory on how consumer spending can rise, even as jobless claims increased to 473,000.
In a bizarre way, the High Noon host said, “the banks are subsidizing the consumer by not foreclosing” on them.
The two key metrics that are actually going the right way at the banks, despite unemployment and foreclosures, are credit cards and auto loans. There defaults, Cramer said, have tapered off remarkably month-after-month.
It seems that consumers have continued to pay their credit cards and car bills in order to keep going out and “shop like the old days,” Cramer said.
So, we get robust numbers from the retails and the goods they sell. Take the great numbers at Kohl's or Nordstrom that weren’t damaged by Walmart’s weak numbers today by pricing deflation, Cramer said.
The bottom-line: This is a positive, Cramer said, for all but the company’s who are doing the lending. There is “excess capital” that should have gone to the home mortgage and not to buying home goods.
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