Top Stocks For 2011, Best Stock Investments For 2011, Hot Stocks For 2011

"Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Kids!"

Remember those terrible 1980s cereal commercials? They were almost as bad as the cereal itself.

Trix, Captain Crunch, Cookie Crisp, Frankenberry... they might as well have called the stuff "chemical-coated sugar puffs." It makes you wonder whether General Mills had a secret deal with the American Dental Association to prop up the cavity-filling business.

Anyhow, those Saturday morning breakfast cereals remind your humble editor of government stimulus: Lots of sugar... lots of hype... 98% artificial coloring and flavoring... and pretty much zero nutritional value.

In keeping with the analogy, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is like the white rabbit from the Trix commercials. You know, the one who always got foiled with the tagline: "Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Kids!"

Except in Bernanke's case it would be: "Silly Chairman, Stimulus is for Gold Stocks!"

As I sit to write to you today, the market is up a bit again.

Not a lot, mind you; in fact, not even as much as it was this morning, when traders sieved through the week's ever-so-ugly facts and figures, and grabbed hold of one odd stat as an excuse to run up shares for an hour or so.

I must admit, even I -- the most bearish of bears -- was taken aback when I first read this item. I am speaking of the Institute of Supply Management's surprising notice that its factory purchasing managers index had risen to 56.3 in August, when most all had expected a decline to 52.3.

"Take That, You Bears!"

 "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.