We are in the early stages of a long and deep recession, says Adam Lass. But that doesn’t mean savvy investors can’t make a profit. Rising unemployment and underfunded local governments is a recipe for crime in urban areas. And that means big business for companies in the self-protection industry. Adam says TASER International (Nasdaq:TASR) stock could triple in the next 18-24 months.

This from Taipan Daily:

It’s certainly no challenge finding stocks under $10 these days. Unfortunately, many of them used to trade for at least twice that much. To make matters worse, in most circumstances, these sad sacks deserve this ignominious fate.

Take your pick: Homebuilders who put up pasteboard shacks alongside highway interchanges and called them “mini-mansions”… banks that sold mortgages to undocumented workers… brokerage houses that bought and sold worthless bonds… retailers who based their

...

Pack a lunch and blow the froth off a cool one…as I’ve got three days of gold and silver market activities to talk about…and lots of fascinating reading as well.

Wednesday, November 26th

This was the last day for all parties to get their gold and silver contracts switched to the 2009 year…or they would have to stand for delivery on Friday. With the U.S. in holiday mode almost from the beginning of trading, the tiny rally at the Comex open was stepped on and never recovered. But it hardly mattered…as volume was virtually non-existent. Silver was the same. Call the day a big zero. However, the shares reacted otherwise. Even though gold was down ten bucks at the close of the equity markets, the HUI still managed a surprising 6% increase…the second day in a row that gold has been flat or down…and the HUI up. Hmmm!

Open interest on Tuesday showed

...

There isn’t much to say here either than I said on Friday we would have a week long holiday lower volume each day rally. That came and passed like clockwork. I had no clue the gains would be so huge in such a short amount of time but in this market you get used to anything and everything.

About the only thing that never changes the past few months has been the news. The news has been downright extremely negative and the negativity has reached a point that it is effecting me and might be having a negative impact in my trading.

I am not used to being a professional investor with a paid website. I am not used to having others be in my trades and see the same thing I see. Now many of you can see exactly what I see and I wonder if that is dangerous or

...

Data continue negative in the US…  China cuts rates… Chinese currency reserves to hit $2 trillion… And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

It sounds like retailers may be disappointed with the results of this years biggest shopping day, as there really isn’t any ‘must have’ items, and consumers are being a little tighter with their wallets.

Consumer spending as reported in the US on Tuesday slid the most in seven years last month. Another report released by the Commerce department showed business investment also tumbled last month. Orders for US durable goods fell twice as much as forecast. And spending in Europe, the UK, and Japan is also dropping. UK consumer spending dropped the most since 1995 and business investment also fell. The global slowdown has hit consumer and business confidence, encouraging them to reign in their spending. This can become a vicious cycle, as the slowdown in consumer and business spending causes

...

div align="justify"The system of quasi-fixed exchange rates that dates back to the Nixon era, and which itself was an evolution of the gold standard span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"Bretton/span Woods regime agreed in 1944 (which couldn't survive the 1960's spike in Vietnam war inspired US inflation), has become unsustainable. In the original gold standard regime (fixed exchange at $35 for an ounce), the capacity of the US to issue dollars to the world was strictly limited, as was the capacity to run up deficits. A key factor driving financial crises is extreme trade imbalances between nations; debt gets accumulated partly as a result of financing a trade deficit. For smaller countries, a vicious spiral can ensue which ends in recourse to the IMF. In 1944, the US was the world's biggest creditor, and imposed a system that placed the whole burden of maintaining the balance of trade on deficit nations; there would ...

How many economic-advice-giving organizations does it take to run a White House?

MarketWatch reports:

President-elect Barack Obama tapped former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to run a new White House advisory board tasked with offering independent advice about how to stage an economic recovery. Obama named the 81-year-old Volcker to head the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board....

The board is modeled on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board that gave President Dwight Eisenhower independent opinions on intelligence issues. Austan Goolsbee, another key Obama adviser, will serve as the economic board's staff director and chief economist.

Volcker can be single-handedly credited with ending the great inflation of the 1970s, and has been critical of the unorthodox steps that Fed Chair Ben Bernanke has taken to address our current challenges. Although I share some of Volcker's concerns, it is not clear to me what specifically Volcker would propose to do instead.

...

HIDDEN VALUE

Dear Value Seeker,

“This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to its perch it’d be pushing up the daisies!”

At this stage in the game, we turn to the collective wisdom of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Of course, they were talking about dead parrots. But they may as well have been talking about the US financial system.

Yesterday, the feds unveiled an $800 billion plan to bailout indebted consumers and mortgage holders.

Now, $800 billion sound like a big number to us. But the feds may just be “spitting in the wind” with this size of war chest, according economist Michael Darda.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Darda said, “Banks won’t be throwing a lot of loans out there when they fear

...

Not every automaker CEO is down on his knees with cap in hand. Some of them are too proud to beg… and Taipan Daily won’t have to beg either with the right options strategy.

Not every auto manufacturer wants charity, you know.

While Detroit’s CEOs were up on Capitol Hill whining and begging like street junkies for a mere $25 billion to tide them over until spring, salesmen from Bentley, Lamborghini and Maserati were working the floor of the Los Angeles Auto Show like madmen in an attempt to stem their stateside sales losses.

Now don’t let their $500 suits and smooth manners fool you. These guys are hurting too. Lambo’s down 15% (pretty much a match to the whole biz’ 2008 decline). And Volkswagen AG’s Bentley (VLKAY) group has slipped a whopping 30%.

No Pain Here

Perhaps the folks who buy BMWs and Mercedes are up against it right now. But

...

The G20 leader are wrong to blame reckless private banks for this credit crisis, says Martin Hutchinson. They were allowed to disregard risks by an overly accommodative monetary policy. Martin says this error means the focus of imminent new bank regulation will miss the key issues.

This from Money Morning:

The gathering of 20 largest industrial countries in Washington this past weekend – billed as a crucial G20 summit – turned out to be a rather dull scrum.

There were promises of a coordinated approach to bank regulation, additional economic stimulus packages, and increased allocations for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) –one of the five “aftershock-investing” opportunities Money Morning has counseled readers to watch for. But none of the G20 meeting proposals seemed even remotely likely to make a difference in the here and now.

Even so, when you consider the kind of mischief the world’s 20

...

Rumours continue to circulate that former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker will be Obama’s Treasury or Fed chief. Volcker’s hardline anti-inflation stance makes him an exciting prospect for Greenspan/Bernanke critics. But Andrew Carpenter says we should also remember the painful recessions that Volckers’ interest rate hikes induced…

This from Investor’s Daily Edge

Some people – even fellow IDE contributors - think Paul Volcker should be the next Secretary of the Treasury… even Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

A non-scientific survey leads me to believe the majority of these Volcker fans were not adults between 1979 and 1987… heck, I suspect most were in diapers or not even here yet… you know, that gleam in daddy’s eye stuff.

Because, as you’ll remember, those were the years when, as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Volcker twice purposely sent the country into deep recessions.

The other thing I suspect is that many of today’s Volcker-ists are young goldbugs… people

...