“Could we be seeing a cease-fire, or even a truce, in Washington’s war against business?” Cramer asked viewers on Monday. “That would be about the most bullish thing that could happen right now.”
The Mad Money host thinks the Obama administration’s anti-business agenda has been a huge obstacle to job creation in this country. So if a truce is on the table, that’s big news.
Now, Cramer’s not sure this is what’s happening, but he’s seeing some encouraging signs. The Journal ran a story today entitled, “Revisiting the Regulations Affecting Business,” which highlighted the administration’s attempts to reach out to the business community in order to find out which regulations were hampering job growth. Cramer doubted the story would have run if the White House weren’t serious about the effort.
Then there’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s interview with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, where he said the administration plans to keep low the taxes on dividends and capital gains. Kudlow is adamant that the government do just that, so Cramer sees it as no surprise that Geithner would make such a statement on that show of all shows. Of course, Congress will decide what those tax rates are, but Cramer thinks the legislators will fall in line behind President Obama.
What these signs point to, though – and this is more important than even the truce – is that the administration acknowledges that it has hurt business in this country. No company seems willing to hire in the face of Obama’s agenda, whether it be health care, “card check” or cap-and-trade. Certainly the Nucors , JPMorgans and International Papers of this country aren’t going to hire until they know exactly how much it will cost them. And the initiatives coming out of the White House seem to have constantly put those costs into question.
There’s a good chance this letup will last only until after the midterm elections, Cramer said, but still, this is more than just a political play. The administration now sees the world recovering from the slowdown – everyone from Mexico to South Korea to Australia, even those ailing European countries, and not just China and India – while we’re getting left behind.
“The disparity is so great that Washington and the pro-Washington media,” Cramer said, “may be forced to acknowledge it.”
This shift in policy was a big part of last week’s rally, Cramer said. But whether or not the truce holds is irrelevant. The simple acknowledgement alone is bullish enough on its own, as job creation finally becomes the White House’s primary focus.
“I think a more pro-business, pro-stock-market attitude will go a very long way to creating real jobs, not public-sector jobs,” Cramer said, “by the fourth quarter of 2010.”
When this story published, Cramer's charitable trust owned JPMorgan Chase and Nucor.
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