By Adam Lass, Senior Editor, Taipan Publishing Group

This American company has gained 777% the old-fashioned way: selling junk in backroom deals.

As regular readers know, I am a Ford man.

Back when I was a kid, you had to make three really important choices. First, you had to pick a political party. Didn’t matter how well you knew the candidates – you picked a party and that’s what you were.

We are talking Democrat or Republican here. Libertarians weren’t much discussed, and backing the Socialists could get your parents blackballed at work. And if you wanted peace around the dinner table, you just went with the same side your folks did.

Second, you had to choose “your” baseball, basketball and football teams. We didn’t have rotisserie leagues back then, so there was no “à la carte.” You picked your guys, and you defended their every move in the schoolyard and on

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This American company has gained 777% the old-fashioned way: selling junk in backroom deals. As regular readers know, I am a Ford man. Back when I was a kid, you had to make three really important choices. First, you had to pick a political party. Didn’t matter how well you knew the candidates – you picked a party and that’s what you were. We are talking Democrat or Republican here. Libertarians weren’t much discussed, and backing the Socialists could get your parents blackballed at work. And if you wanted peace around the dinner table, you just went with the same side your folks did. Second, you had to choose “your” baseball, basketball and football teams. We didn’t have rotisserie leagues back then, so there was no “à la carte.” You picked your guys, and you defended their every move in the schoolyard and on the stoop – with fists if need be. Prudent Choices To this ...

by guest author: Adam Lass http://taipanpublishinggroup.com

Impressed by yesterday’s breakout? No, not really! In fact, I think you should short the pants off it.

I may as well start the column with the question everyone is asking me.

“If everything is as bad as you guys say, if the shoots are all shriveling, if banks are all screwed, if the technicals are calling for a whopping breakdown, why is the Dow breaking out?”

Are things really better all around than your erstwhile bearish correspondents have been telling you?

The simple answer is “no, it’s not.” And also, “no, they’re not.”

Facts vs. Slogans

Let’s address that second denial first.

As much as the cheerleading squad might wish to muddle the issues, the basic facts of the matter remain quite clear. Every honest economist concedes that the recession will continue through the rest of 2009 and into 2010.

We have become so numb to the word recession that many investors …

By Guest Author: Adam Lass (www.taipanpublishinggroup.com)

Anyone who has ever flown on most any commercial airline is familiar with this scenario: Your plane is supposed to depart in the next few minutes. The big board says the flight is on time. The lady behind the counter is all smiles.

But you haven’t actually boarded or anything. In fact, as you squint out the window, you can see that there is no plane available to board, a fact that the oblivious clerk seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge.

Thirty minutes after your takeoff slot has come and gone, the ubiquitous screens that decorate the departure lounge’s walls suddenly blur, flicker and light up with the announcement that some flights may be delayed… by 10 minutes.

Airlines Crash and Burn

I’ve always wondered: Is this just wishful thinking? “Maybe pixies will make a plane appear!” Or more probably, “Maybe if we say nothing, no one will complain.”

When …

Make more than 300% when the world wakes up sick come winter.   There is a myth in this biz that “if it bleeds, it leads.” The idea is that what truly makes mainstream media moguls happy is guts, gore and conflict. Drama sells, and sells well. Death, war and sex sell even better.

It’s commonly held that when Frederick Remington cavilled to William Randolph Hearst that conditions in Cuba were not bad enough to warrant hostilities, Hearst told Remington to shut up and draw: “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

The truth is, as always, somewhat more complex. Yes, a good tale of death and destruction will hold the public’s interest for a while. But it has to be something they can easily wrap their minds around. And it has to go somewhere if it’s going to have

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V-Shaped Bottom or Second Valley? The truth can earn you 79%.  Watching economists attempt to find consensus can be like watching a burlap sack full of cats – lots of sound and apparent action, but precious little benefit.

Unfortunately, you eventually have to open the sack full of angry cats to find out how it all comes out. And then there’s that part about going to jail (or hell) because you put cats in a burlap sack.

Not that I would ever do something like that. This is really just one of those mental exercises. But I do watch economists a lot. I guess someone has to.

The One Real Question

The big argument this week: “The V-shaped bottom” versus “The Second Valley.” I guess we should open the sack a bit and see who’s winning.

Adherents to the former believe that we have seen the worst that fate (or rather our own stupidity

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For those of us who predict stuff for a living, this is one of those lovely moments in economics when we know for a fact that only one of two things will happen in the near future. We now know one thing for a fact… that in the first third of the second quarter of 2009, American retailers paid more and sold less, both by price and by unit. Simple arithmetic tells you that this means lower profits.

“How to earn 367% off American Retail’s “Seven-Ten Split.”

“Biggest jump in wholesale food prices in more than a year!”

– Associated Press, commenting on the Labor Department’s latest wholesale prices report

I know that Justice and I have gone on for some length now on the recent rise in agricultural prices. And I now am about to delve into that same topic – again.

By now, you are probably wondering if

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Goldman Sachs thinks you can make 40% on Ford. I think that figure should be a lot closer to 400%. China has finally, truly and wholeheartedly embraced “21st century American-style capitalism.” God help them.

Here’s the headline that popped up on one of my news feeds a day or so ago: “Chinese Carmakers Record Sales.”

That’s right, in the middle of a yearlong global recession, China is selling more cars than ever before. Skimming down through the article, one notes that sales of minivans are up some 40% Q1 2008 to Q1 2009.

China’s “Recession”

How can this be true? Isn’t China suffering too as depressed American and European consumers decline to buy their cheap T-shirts and lead-painted gewgaws?

Actually, China’s version of recession is a tad different than ours. It did indeed miss its target of a blistering 8% annualized growth

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How to make 300% off Washington’s lies. I don’t like to think that I am actually that much of a curmudgeon. I will concede, however, that historically, economically and financially speaking, lies and liars are probably closer to the norm than not.

And thank the Lord (or, perhaps more appropriately, that bad old fallen angel) for them, because the proliferation of lies, half-truths and obfuscations can offer the skeptical investor some of his finest trading opportunities.

Here’s an example: Back in 1982, 16-year-old Barry Minkow of Reseda, Calif., started a carpet cleaning biz out of his parent’s garage. Now these were optimistic, go-go times… the beginning of the Reagan Revolution that would see the Dow Jones Industrial Average rise from sub-1,000 levels to unthinkably unimaginable heights.

A $100 Million Con Doesn’t Seem Like Much These Days

Pretty early in the game, Minkow decided on one thing for

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Most investors want to abandon everything and run for cover thanks to all the bad news, stock collapses and recession. Can it get any worse? Sandy Franks of the Taipan Publishing Group says, “no.” So what do you do with your money now?

Here she recommends to buy gold, invest in stocks with discrimination and keep your money liquid in treasuries.

This from Sandy:

The stock market did not react well to the government’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan.

On Feb. 23, 2009, the Dow tumbled to 7,114 – hitting an eleven-year low. The other major indices, including the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, fell as well.

The latest economic numbers aren’t any better. The price of single-family homes plunged 18% and the Consumer Confidence Index, which was down slightly in January, plummeted more than 12 points in February to 25.

The combination of bad economic news and a tanking

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