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…

The common adage has most every rally climbing a wall of worry. “If I buy now, I might get crushed for the fifth or sixth or seventh time in the past 10 years… but if I wait, the market might run on me, and I won’t see a decent entry price like this for years to come…”

How to Make 191% Gains as Wall Street Swallows a Poison Pill – Again! I could start out today’s column by telling you all about how official unemployment is at a 26-year high at 9.5%. I could go on at length as to how unofficial unemployment may very well be double that and we’d never know.

These facts are not subject to dispute. And they could earn you as much as 236% gains.  For the better part of the past year, you have been hearing stories about the H1N1 influenza virus, a.k.a. swine flu. For a while those reports included enough dramatic sudden deaths to qualify as “front-page news.”

BA obviously can’t land its 2009 numbers. So when does arrogance become fraud?

The counterfeiters that were caught on the Italian border can’t hold a candle to the pros in Washington.  As regular readers of this column know, I am an avid reader of history. An episode of particular interest to me is the long tussle between France and England during the mid and late 17th century.

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.

The shell game is one of the oldest cons on record. Greek historians tell of ancient Egyptian slicksters stripping rubes of spare coins in the shadow of the pyramids. We have concrete evidence dating back to 1670, wherein Richard Hull writes of rogues cheating farmers at “thimblerig” at ye old faire.

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.

Washington’s latest bailout scheme will rob you blind for years to come.  I object! Sometimes the stuff we talk about here is pretty academic. This country is up… that sector is down. Sometimes it’s all about a specific stock idea that you might care to invest in.