CNBC's Jim Cramer wants to make something very clear: the United States isn't hostage to China just because it owns a lot of U.S. Treasurys. "That is not how it works," the "Mad Money" host said Tuesday as markets slid on escalating trade tensions. "If the Chinese decided to dump their treasury holdings, that will move our long-term rates back up where they should be," he said. "The banks will become a heck of a lot more profitable. And commentators will stop droning on and on about the lack of inflection in the yield curve as a sign that the future's bleaker than we thought." In short, China selling its $1.18 trillion U.S. Treasury holdings could actually have major benefits for the U.S. market, Cramer said. "There are plenty of things I am really worried about when it comes to our escalating trade war with the PRC ... but this ain't one of them," he said. "If China wants to sell their $1.2 trillion worth of U.S. Treasurys to somehow punish us, I say go ahead, make my day."

The trillion-dollar question in U.S.-China debacle

An Apple store in Hangzhou, China. Zhang Peng | LightRocket | Getty Images

Carrizo Oil & Gas CEO flags an unusual problem for drillers

Chip Johnson, CEO, Carrizo Oil & Gas, with Jim Cramer on CNBC's "Mad Money." Scott Mlyn | CNBC

The Permian Basin, the largest shale oil-producing region in the United States, is on a path to become one of the world's largest oilfields, according to recent estimates. But as producers extract more and more resources from the region, which stretches across Texas and New Mexico, an unusual problem is bubbling up: a surplus of water. "In the Permian Basin, you make a lot of water," Chip Johnson, the CEO of independent oil and gas driller Carrizo Oil & Gas, told CNBC on Tuesday. "Typically, you'll make five barrels of water for every barrel of oil." When companies like the $2.2 billion Carrizo extract oil from the Permian, salt water comes out with it, creating issues around handling the extra fluids, Johnson said. "It's probably the most water-rich or water-problem oil basin," Johnson told Cramer. "You have 15 million barrels a day of salt water right now that has to be dealt with, usually re-injected back into briny reservoirs that are deeper than anything else." To watch and read more about Johnson's interview, click here.

Off the charts: Calling Tesla's run

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Optinose CEO on 'innovative' way to raise awareness

When Optinose developed a drug to treat chronic rhinosinusitis, which affects 30 million people in the United States, the pharmaceutical delivery company innovated a new system of raising awareness. "We frankly do things in sort of novel ways," CEO Peter Miller told Cramer in a Thursday interview. Miller said that after the company received regulatory approval for the drug in September 2017, its leadership purposely decided to delay its launch in order to build awareness. And according to Miller, it worked: in September, the drug, called XHANCE, only had 29 percent awareness. Now, it's over 85 percent, the CEO said. "Despite the fact [that] we chose to not launch for a period of time, we had an innovative idea to put clinical nurse educators out in the field prior to the launch of the product," Miller told Cramer. "They were able to educate doctors on the disease state here, how our product ... uses the magic of breath to get the drug high and deep in the nasal cavity, and that, I think, [was] a brilliant idea by our chief commercial officer."

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