After last night, I’m ready to get out the 00 buckshot, myself.

I’ve got my eye out for good intentions, gone bad after spending the last three editions of Notes discussing the idea of financial regulatory reform.

During 52-mile commute home yesterday, they were all over the place, anything from idiotic signs to a couple of state cops setting a trap and writing tickets for not moving to the left lane when passing a stopped emergency vehicle.

The gung-ho troopers had rush-hour traffic slowed for over a mile.

But my mind really started spinning when I passed an out-of-state big rig. I could not help but notice the federal and state ID numbers stenciled onto his door followed by a host of annual registration decals from a cornucopia of states. Between the tolls, the permitting fees and the growing list of regulations, it’s no wonder the trucking industry’s bottom line collapsed.

Once I finally crossed the creek and pulled into my driveway, I was ready to sit down and relax by turning on the local news. Let’s just say it’s a good thing the guns are locked up. That TV would still be smoking.

Here’s what the local news “personalities” had lined up to tell us.

They started with a lead story about Harley Davidson’s plans to abandon its largest manufacturing plant at the heart of our local community. Unless it gets strong union concessions in the next few weeks, the company plans to pick up and move to Shelbyville, Kentucky.

Can’t say I really blame the company. The local union tends to form a picket line every other year.

After a short break to show off the latest products from GM (a commercial you and I paid for), the news was back on. This time they were discussing how a local homeless shelter had reached full capacity and is now forced to turn dozens of needy folks away each day.

The bright side of Harley leaving is the county will have all the space it needs. Most of the abandoned Caterpillar factory remains empty as well, just a couple of miles down the street.

Next up was the neighboring city’s news of layoffs and a tax increase. With revenues down and the state battling a budget crisis of its own, the mayor is writing up pink slips and preparing new tax calculations.

He’s even interested in sending local churches a tax bill, noting a third of local property owners don’t pay a penny.

After that cheery bit of news was another story of layoffs. This time it is the state of Pennsylvania cutting 319 jobs, taking the total reduction for the year to 769, plus 2,000 unfilled positions.

But don’t worry. The state’s lawmakers have decided to forego their annual cost-of-living raise. Their pay will stay at $78,000 this year.

I finally gave up on watching the newscast after the “investigative team” revealed we need to keep a close eye on those lobbyists hanging out with our lawmakers.

There’s a news flash.

The state’s two top lobbyists, natural gas drillers and the tobacco industry, appear to be better represented in the state’s capital than any of its constituents.

After missing a legally imposed budget deadline by well over 100 days, the state was hit with a bevy of new taxes and program cuts. The only two groups that came out ahead were, you guessed it, gas drillers and tobacco producers.

The smokeless tobacco industry kept its ultra-low retail tax and another 30,000 acres of Penn’s woods are now open to Marcellus Shale drilling.

With that much lobbying taking place, one would naturally think us tax-paying folks would be able to find out who was the grand recipient. But politicians are sneaky.

Because they write the legislation, they know the best way around it.

It turns out, no state lawmaker has surpassed the public-disclosure thresholds for lobbying gifts and contributions. Go figure.

I have to get a permit to nail a shed up in the back yard, but they can rob us blind and its 100% legal.

After that bit of news, there was twelve minutes remaining in the newscast but I couldn’t take any more. I went down to the garage and cleaned my gun.

*** It is good news for TFN Strategic Trader members. As natural gas prices plunged by close to 7% today, our recent play against the trend is paying off big time. All four of my recent picks are up by double-digit proportions, with one big winner now worth gains of a whopping 385% as the underlying position sunk to record low territory.

There is word spreading across commodity trading pits that the nation will continue to inject natural gas into its reserves throughout November, the month when withdrawals typically occur. I said this would happen months ago.

To see what will happen next, read this report.

*** Gold prices keep soaring. And investors keep wondering when they’re going to bump into the ceiling.

Some blame the weakening U.S. dollar for gold’s rise. Contrarian maven Bill Bonner extended that to the weakness of all “fiat” currencies — not just the dollar. My colleague Christoph Amberger over at TFN was a tad less general. He pointed out today that gold actually traded at $200 less per ounce in 2008… when the dollar’s exchange rate against the euro was even lower than today, at $1.63.

He thinks the main factor behind the dollar’s relative decline to gold is the fact that it doesn’t pay to own dollars any more: “Zero-point-seven-five percent APR on a CD? That’s just marginally better than the lint in your pockets! Now, gold is an asset notorious for not generating returns other than speculative gains. It doesn’t pay interest or dividends. But at this point, neither does the U.S. dollar. Or the yen. Or the euro, pound sterling, Icelandic krona: “The comparative opportunity cost of holding gold has been eliminated! Plus, the cash flows out of the dollar have created an asset bubble that will keep inflating!”
How long will this last?

As long as the Federal Reserve keep punishing dollar savers with non-existing interest rates! That may be at least another year: “Not because the world is abandoning “fiat currencies”… but because holding dollars is a losing game now — engineered and maintained by the U.S. government!”
So far, the team over at TFN’s Hot Stock Confidential has been rubbing their contrarian hands as gold went up: Bullion may be up twenty percent for the year. But HSC’s silver stocks are beating that yield by multiples! Just today, the team took 32% gains in just over a month on Silvercorp.  Amberger points out that this was double-digit gainer #70 for HSC members so far this year.

But they’re not abandoning precious metals. Not at all! Here’s what they’re up to: “Our next Hot Stock Pick is coming out this Thursday. With gold futures at record highs of US$1,151 an ounce today, we’re going to stick with a precious metals pick: At today’s levels, the gold reserves of this junior Canadian gold miner are worth a whopping $460.4 million!

“Let’s put that into the fuzzy math of financial newsletter marketers: With 333.42 million shares outstanding, $1.70 currently buys you 1.38 ounces or $1,589 worth of that gold! As gold prices keep moving up in the great game we call the Commodities Carry Trade, this U.S.-traded stock could snag you a cool 30% gain before New Year’s.”

Hot Stock Confidential members will be receiving this Hot Stock Pick of the week tomorrow before noon. You might want to be one of them. Join up right here.

I managed to pack in four barbecues (or “cookouts” to put it in American lingo) over the weekend – all pretty close to home – so not too much damage done. And with soaring gasoline and food prices contributing to a projected 3.6% rise in consumer prices this year, it might be the best way to go.

Gas prices obviously remain front-and-center of the news, so let’s check in and see how it’s affecting consumers on both sides of the Atlantic, plus an industry that is arguably getting hammered even harder.

National Average Gas Price

Following a daily march higher over the past three weeks, the current national average gas price per gallon sits at an ugly $3.93. But with gas in 11 US states already over $4 a gallon, this number is now more for headlines than anything else. Bottom line: It’s expensive!

Little wonder that AAA projected a drop in Memorial Day travelers this year – the first decline since 2002. Many have also scaled back their plans, due to rising gas prices. And MasterCard reported a 7% drop in gas sales in the week leading up to the holiday.

But it wasn’t just Americans feeling the pressure at the pump this weekend…

Truck JamLike in the US, Monday was also a holiday in Britain, with the long weekend giving Brits a similar chance to hit the road for a short break.

Trouble is, UK gas prices are 17% higher than this time last year, with diesel prices almost 30% higher. The national average is currently $1.14 a liter and $1.26 a liter respectively. In US terms, that’s about $10.16 and $11.23 per gallon.

You can see why 16% of respondents to an Automobile Association survey said they plan to use their cars less.

What bothers many Brits, though, is that about 60% of fuel costs go into the government’s coffers in taxes. And today, the nation’s truckers took their protest to the streets.

In a mass demonstration against high prices and the government’s planned 2 pence per liter fuel tax rise (set to come into effect in October, having been postponed from April), hundreds of truckers set off from various parts around the UK and conducted a “go-slow” along the motorways.

One convoy ended at London, where the truckers handed a petition to the government at Downing Street. The other convoy, starting from further afield, handed its petition to the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff because (ironically), the trip to London would have cost too much.

The underlying problem that the trucking industry faces today is certainly not exclusive to Britain, though. High fuel prices are hammering both British and American truckers. So could America see a similar backlash?

America’s Big Rigs Have Big ProblemsActually, it already has. You may remember some truckers driving their rigs to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in early April to protest against high fuel prices and imploring Congress to provide some relief measures.

You can see why. While diesel prices are up 30% in Britain over the past year, the price has blasted 80% higher in the US – from $2.50 a gallon this time last year to $4.50 today, according to the New York Times.

When it costs $1,125 to fill up a 250-gallon fuel tank, that clearly crushes any kind of profit margin that trucking companies hope to generate.

In fact, the American Trucking Association says times are so tough today that during the first quarter, 935 companies with fleets of five trucks or more went out of business. That’s up an astonishing 143% from the 385 in Q1 2007 – and is the worst quarterly “bust rate” since 2001.

In total, 45,000 trucking vehicles have permanently pulled off America’s highways since early 2007, according to America’s Commercial Transportation Research.

The domino effect of this is far-reaching. Reduced profits can erode employee wages, decrease supplies of goods, and create more potential for failing companies. In turn, that can cause bankruptcy and dents GDP growth.

So is there a way to play these developments?

Hit The Road (The Railroad, That Is)In a desperate attempt to offset some of the costs, some trucking firms are turning to rail companies.

While trucks can only haul so much and are directly impacted by rising gasoline costs, rail companies can absorb soaring oil prices more easily, as they can haul more goods. A few of the biggest names in this area include:

Burlington Northern Sante Fe (NYSE: BNI) – a firm that Warren Buffett has invested heavily in… Union Pacific Corp (NYSE: UNP)… and CSX Corp (NYSE: CSX).

All three are also members of the Dow Jones Transportation Average (^DJT), which is a remarkable story itself…

Transports Bust The TrendRemarkably, despite the march in oil prices to over $130 a barrel, that hasn’t stopped the Dow Transports from surging, too.

This is a major reversal in the historical trend. Oil prices and the Dow Transports usually move in opposite directions – and you’d think that with fuel being the biggest expense for Transportation Index companies and high oil prices pressuring so many areas of the transportation sector, the index that represents these firms would also be under severe pressure.

Not so. The DJT is actually up 15% in 2008, and as my colleague Jim Stanton reported in his bi-weekly “Sector Watch” column last Monday (May 19), the index raced to an all-time high of 5,550.17 on the same day. Jim applied some technical analysis to the index – and how to play the next move profitably through the index’s ETF – so take a look.

With the index made up of airlines like American (NYSE: AMR), Continental (NYSE: CAL), JetBlue (Nasdaq: JBLU) and Southwest (NYSE: LUV), plus shipping companies FedEx (NYSE: FDX) and UPS (NYSE: UPS) – all of which are buckling under the weight of high oil and gas prices – economists are now hotly debating whether it’s throwing the market a curveball.

Traditionally seen as a sign of US economic strength and turnarounds, the fact that the index is soaring while consumers and the economy are struggling is a source of confusion.