Buy gold, silver and oil as fast as you can, you morons, or die a horrible death by inflation like the people of Zimbabwe!

Investors are fleeing the stock market as the rules of the game keep changing. But if you know what the next shift will be, you can stay ahead of the curve. Shah Gilani outlines the five coming “aftershocks” of this financial crisis, and what they mean for your portfolio.

Wise investors have traditionally headed for real estate investment trusts (REITs) for their regular, sizeable dividends. Over the past two years, we have grown accustomed to bi-annual payments of 6%, 8% or even 10% of share price.

What if I could tell you one REIT is currently paying over 350%? You would think it is too good to be true.

Of course, you would be right. General Growth Properties (NYSE:GGP), with its $0.43 share price and last dividend payment of $2 per share, may pop up on the screens of investors looking for a big dividend, but there is absolutely no way you should expect to see any dividend from this REIT, let alone anything close to a double-digit payout.

Desperate for cash

General…

The housing crisis continues to drag on and drag down the US economy. This piece from Reuters says it all:

A California man who has defaulted on nine homes and expects banks to foreclose on all of them, forcing him into bankruptcy, says he now considers it “a mistake” to have invested in the real estate market.

Shawn Forgaard, a 37-year-old software company project manager, bought one home for his family to live in and nine more as investments.

On July 16, 2007, we sounded the alarm on commercial real estate stocks… aka REITs. We cited record low yields and high valuations as reasons for avoiding – or even shorting – the sector. It didn’t take long for the market to prove us right.

In the currency market, the dollar slipped against the euro. Late Monday, the euro was trading at $1.5491 vs. $1.5424 on Friday.

Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) Azvitt sent a piece by John Browne of Euro Pacific Capital, who writes that professor Robert Shiller “has determined that house prices rose in line with inflation, between 1900 and 1995, at 3.3 percent per annum.