Hey, I'm Kramer.

Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramer, Erica. I'll be with my friends. I'm trying to save you a little money here.

My job, not just to entertain, but on days like day, educate, teach you about how to handle this. So call me at 1743C, tweet me at Jim Kramer. It's a miserable day, just nasty. Drenched in red ink,

the Dow plummeting 817. S&B plunging 1.61%. NASDAQ

coming 1.41%.

Don't buy, don't buy, don't buy.

It was hideous.

So we got to ask ourselves, how the heck did this happen?

We got to dissect the reasons for this decline before I give you a message of hope, not despair.

I will let everyone else do the despair thing.

They do it very well.

First, stocks are going down because interest rates keep going higher. Like it or not, the stock market takes its queue from the much

larger bond market, even though most publicly traded companies we deal with don't borrow a lot of

money. They don't have floating rate debt either. So who cares about treasury yields, right?

Wrong. The economy runs on credit always has, and the cost of that credit is going higher, and that

will slow business and hurt earnings.

It could hurt you more than the tax breaks will make you happy.

Consider that.

It's what is at stake for you.

Right now, we're in a transition mode.

We're going from moderately high interest rates to genuinely high interest rates.

And here I'm speaking of the long rates that are set by the bond market, not the Fed.

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