Cramer's 'Mad Money' Recap: The Bears Are Wrong

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The bears may sound smart, but Jim Cramer told his "Mad Money" viewers Thursday he'd rather make money, which is why he took a minute to challenge the conventional "wisdom" the bears keep peddling.

With the markets so utterly focused on events overseas, Cramer fired up the Wayback Machine to remind investors what the bear case sounded like four years ago, and compared it to what actually happened.

Four years ago the world was falling off a cliff, according to the bears. There was the personal cliff with consumers harboring record levels of debt, the corporate cliff of heavily indebted corporations, the municipal bond cliff where every locality was nearing bankruptcy and, of course, the housing cliff where home prices were being obliterated.

Yet, over the last four years, the American consumer has been able to pare down debt, and a wave of refinancing has strengthened our corporations. Despite a few high-profile municipal bankruptcies, your local city hall remains intact. Yes, home prices were obliterated, but over the past four years the housing market has gone from severe overbuilding to a housing shortage in some areas. All in all, not the end of the world.

So today as the bears pound the table about Europe, they neglect to mention the markets have already discounted European profits of corporations to zero. China is just beginning its series of interest rate cuts, said Cramer, and rate cuts move stocks. Falling commodity prices are a good thing for the U.S., as is its production of a record amount of its own oil and natural gas.

The U.S. still faces its own euro-style fiscal cliff, but Cramer hopes leaders will wake up soon and address it. If our leaders abolish the uncertainty, that alone could pay for the belt-tightening that will be required, he added.

Cramer concluded by saying that when you look at it closely, "there's a lot less 'bull' in the bull case than you might think."

Executive Decision