I’ve been kicking an idea around for a while. It’s one that I am now convinced requires action. If you are holding stocks in a pure-play ethanol company – dump them now, while you still can get something out of them.

Now, we don’t hold any ethanol stocks in the Asia Business & Investing portfolios… but I think this is an urgent situation that requires immediate action on your part.

Also, avoid at all costs any slick come-ons you might receive that beg you to invest in the ethanol miracle.

Ethanol is toast… actually corn flakes.

Of all the great scams the US federal government has perpetrated on its people, when all is said and done, the corn-based alternative fuel will go down near the top as one of the all-time greatest.

Born in bad science, perverted by shady for-profit interests, ethanol is nothing more than a massive billions-of-dollars gift from Uncle Sam to big agriculture.

It takes more energy to create a gallon of ethanol than that same gallon produces.

Mark my words, fast-expanding global food crisis means ethanol’s days as a darling of petro-apologists are just about over.

My bet is that you’ll soon see big agriculture tout some sort of mysterious breakthrough that it will claim allows it to make ethanol more efficiently. That will be a desperate lie.

It will be a dog that won’t hunt, because the mainstream media have begun to figure out the ethanol con job. It’s discovered the sound science that proves that stripping the land in order to grow more corn for biofuels actually adds more carbon to the environment – a lot more.

Look, the agriculture lobby may be the US’s most powerful, but next time you pay $4.49 for a 24 oz. box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and $3.75 for a gallon of gas, ask yourself whose well-being is it lobbying for?

Sometime during the next five years, no matter what then President Al Gore (doesn’t it just have to be) or President John McCain will claim, ethanol’s slimy reality in the US will lead to its collapse.