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 "Consumer spending is up. Time to sell consumer stocks."

Has your humble correspondent finally gone stark raving mad?

Has this summer's endless series of "mixed" (read as "mostly fabricated") economic reportage, bifurcated technical set-ups and volatile 100-point market swings that only yield flat share prices destroyed my ability to make sense of the markets?

Possibly, but if so, I'm not alone.

Wall Street's Growing Gap Between Hype...

A recent Bloomberg compilation of some 159,919 current ratings of stocks found that analysts are thoroughly convinced that corporate profits ought rise some 36% over the next quarter or so.

This is the highest such guesstimate since 1988!

According to an article that appeared in The New York Times, written by Norihiro Kato, the Japanese have gotten good at sloughing off their worldly cares. Japan is no longer the world's number two economy; it was eclipsed this summer by China. But the Japanese are used to slippage. We all know the story of their 20-year economic decline; Japan's GDP actually peaked out about 15 years ago. It has been sliding ever since. That is only a part of the story. In terms of rice production, the Japanese have been downsizing for more than 40 years. Japan's population, too, grew by 1% per year from 1917 to 1977. It peaked out in 2005. There are fewer Japanese now than there were 5 years ago. If the trend continues, eventually there will be none.

Our back page dictum: people come to think what they must think when they must think it. What do people on the road to extinction think? Ask the Japanese. According to Kato, they become less competitive and more reflective, almost zen-like, turning an eye inward, away from striving, fighting, jostling and whacking...gracefully accepting whatever the economic gods send their way. In the meantime, they stay at home and save their money; like a lap dancer in retirement, they know it is all downhill from here.

We went to our last summer soiree last night. It took place at a neighbor's chateau, where a large, ancient stone barn had been transformed into a dining room for 100 people.

"We're screwed...so are you..." said a friend.

First, an update from Wall Street: the Dow was unable to sustain a bounce yesterday. It fell 74 points. Gold dropped $3.

Hiring...house sales...the latest news confirms that there is no real recovery going on. And now this from the AP:

I was sitting in the office of a billion-dollar hedge fund manager, and good friend, a couple of months ago comparing notes.

The mood was casual... until I mentioned a side project of mine.

I had found a 39-year-old glitch in the federal accounting system.

Not only that, but I figured out how to exploit this error to make as much as $3,750 every month.

The truth is I sold my best stock portfolio in May 2007 and was using this glitch as my only way to make money.

My strategy is so foolproof, when the best stock market dropped 36% in just over a year, I kept every penny of my wealth intact.

My friend pleaded with me to keep the details of my strategy between us. He even offered me a large sum of money to do so.

But, I wasn't interested in keeping it to myself.

That's why I'm writing you today. As a Taipan Publishing Group subscriber, I want to give you first crack at this incredible moneymaking opportunity.