By Stockpickr Staff
Posted on June 11, 2009

The three major indices were all in the green at midday on Thursday after the Department of Labor announced that last week's initial jobless claims fell to 601,000 from the previous week's 625,000, compared with expectations for 615,000 claims. Continuing claims increased by 59,000 to about 6.8 million.

Dell (DELL) CEO Michael Dell has said he expects a "significant-sized" acquisition for the company, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Bank of America (BAC), whose CEO, Ken Lewis, is testifying before Congress today regarding its Merrill Lynch acquisition, was upgraded to outperform at Keefe Bruyette & Woods with a $16.50 price target.

Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) was also upgraded, to buy from neutral at Goldman, with a price target of $8, up from $6.50. UnitedHealth (UNH), on the other hand, was downgraded to underperform at Oppenheimer, which decreased its price target to $24 from $32.

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

These stocks could be in the news for a number of reasons. Some require immediate attention; others may not. Regardless, it never hurts to hear what Cramer (or any professional investors) 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 wrote:

"The headline on top of The Wall Street Journal's Money & Investing section is 'Failed Banks Dot Georgia's Vista,' but underneath is 'Playing Mortgage Market Proves Tricky.' Meanwhile the Financial Times headline on page 3 reads: 'TARP Payback Creates 'haves' and 'have-nots.'' These are two sides of the same governmental coin.

"The hard-to-get loans that the Journal references have to do with solvent banks unwilling to sell loans to investors. Of course they should be: Those loans are going higher in price as housing recovers. They should be bought. No bank that has raised capital is possibly going to sell them -- they are coming back, for heaven's sake.

"The opportunity comes from the have-not and failed banks. The FDIC is so focused on the management at places like Citigroup (C) that it is missing the sensible opportunity to parcel out these banks to the haves and then sell the "bad" loans to the vultures. The Treasury seems determined to keep all banks alive instead of shot-gunning the weak ones.

"The fault of the system here seems to be the friction between the FDIC, which is focused on the high-profile battles, and Treasury, which is focused on winning the war against unemployment. A healthy banking system with private investment will return more TARP money, pay down the deficit and give impetus to taking hits on loans that never mature. Meanwhile the securitized loans in the system can be bought by buzzards and we can get through this.

"But we must collapse Fifth Third (FITB), KeyCorp (KEY), SunTrust (STI) and Regions Financial (RF) into other banks if we are going to move through this period. We aren't there yet.

"What's with the FDIC? What's with Treasury? Get the public involved, get the shotgun marriages finished and give us a stronger banking system so more lending can flow. President Obama must stop these internecine squabbles. We are not getting to where we should be post-stress test. We could be there in a matter of months if the government addresses this dichotomy."

For more of what Cramer's had to say about stocks in the news, check out the Cramer's Take portfolio.

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