By Stockpickr Staff
Updated at 3:36 p.m. EDT on April 22, 2009

In Wednesday's headlines was news that Freddie Mac's (FRE) acting CFO, David Kellermann, was found dead in his home this morning in an apparent suicide.

In stock news, Morgan Stanley (MS) reported a first-quarter loss of 57 cents per share, compared with a profit of $1.26 per share last year, missing expectations of an 8-cent-per-share loss. The firm also cut its dividend.

In Wednesday afternoon trading, Morgan Stanley was down $1.52, or 5.2%, at $23.13.

Freeport-McMoRan's (FCX) also missed expectations with earnings of 11 cents per share on revenue of $2.6 billion compared with the expected 13 cents per share on revenue of $2.69 billion.

On Wednesday afternoon, Freeport was adding $1.19, or 2.9%, at $41.92.

Companies reporting Tuesday included DuPont (DD), which reported a 59% drop in first-quarter profit, and United Technologies (UTX), whose first-quarter profit fell 28%.

Dupont was up 44 cents, or 1.6%, at $28.50 on Wednesday afternoon, while United Technologies was down 34 cents, at $47.65.

With this in mind, we thought we'd take a closer look at some of the stocks making headlines lately and see what Jim Cramer's had to say about them.

These stocks could be in the news for a number of reasons. Some require immediate attention; while others may not. Regardless, it never hurts to hear what Cramer (or any of the other professional investors on the site) has to say about them. The key is to gather as much information as you can in order to make the most informed investment decisions you can.

In a recent post to his RealMoney blog, Cramer had this to say:

"If you were to tell me that business around the world dropped 30% in one quarter -- something that you could argue truly did occur -- I would expect gigantic losses from most industrial companies. They have giant fixed costs that they can't possibly curtail in time to save the quarter, and they have no ability to suddenly start saving money in this environment.

"Instead, though, we see profits -- profits like those just reported by Du Pont, which put up a number that simply wasn't that bad. That's the best way to describe it: not bad. Same with United Tech. Not bad. We also saw not bad numbers from Emerson (EMR), PPG (PPG) and Illinois Tool Works (ITW) last week -- not bad, meaning simply these big companies didn't swing to colossal losses as could have been expected. Let's include IBM (IBM) in that parade, too. Think about it: Should these companies be making any money at all in this environment?

"Some companies can't pull it off like you would like to see in this down-30% environment. Eaton (ETN) truly didn't do a good job in the quarter even as Sandy Cutler, the CEO, tried to be relentlessly upbeat about earnings.

"But then take Halliburton (HAL). Drilling just stopped in this country to hear them talk, but how did they do? They made a lot of money.

"I don't think people remember or understand previous downturns, where we would have these swings for industrial companies that would produce red ink immediately upon the kind of colossal reduction in business worldwide. These are depression numbers, and the companies are putting up slowdown numbers, which is why Dow 6300 still looks like a bottom.

"One thought the banking sector was particularly hard-hit because it was particularly reckless going into the downturn, looking more like the old industrial companies rather than conservative entities that might be able to cut back enough to mitigate losses.

"Just the opposite.

"But even there, too, we are getting fee incomes and income off of deposits vs. loans -- net interest margins -- that are impressive in some places. No, I am not saying the banking business isn't awful, I am saying that it isn't as bad as I thought. Of course the stocks ran in the front of "not as bad as I thought" earnings, but at the same time it is worth noting that every one of these banks could have been nationalized and we would be struggling to think why we did it after these reported quarters. These banks are not Bank United (BKUNA) or Corus (CORS), they are companies that have a lot of bad loans that they can handle if they simply are allowed to continue to earn as much as they did in these quarters.

"Oh, and all of the one-time gains, the Chinese bank sale, the changes in bonds -- I think that had an outfit like Bank of America (BAC) reported everything without these one-time gains we would have been pleasantly surprised; it was that it looked like a snow job that was so disappointing."

For more of what Cramer's had to say about stocks making headlines lately, including Caterpillar (CAT), Goldman Sachs (GS), Coach (COH) and Coca-Cola (KO), check out the Cramer's Take portfolio on Stockpickr.

(Editor's note: At the time of publication and/or original publication of his posts and shows, Cramer owned Emerson, Freeport, Morgan Stanley and PPG for his Action Alerts PLUS charitable trust.)

Who's on Stockpickr Answers? Richard Widows will be on Stockpickr Answers on April 22 to respond to investing and trading questions posed by members of the Stockpickr community. Not a member? Join the Stockpickr community today -- free.