Armored bear technology.

Purina cat food?

Cheap booze.

Tin.

For tin cans.

Attached with string to replace cellphones when the electric grid goes down.

And for tinfoil hats: for those who believe that the grid didn't actually go down, and that the towers are still sending out their waves.

When the Russian stock market crashed in 1998, my father and uncle bought out a neighborhood grocery store's entire stock of oatmeal.

Liquor, ammo, and cigarettes.

No, not stocks, actual commodities. I want to sit in a small warehouse, loaded with booze, bullets, and smokes. For the next few years, while the invisible hand does what it's gotta do, I'll be drinking heavily, smoking, and making my empty bottles and crush-proof boxes pay the ultimate price.

Seriously, though, I've been quit since about March or so, and these last couple weeks I've had cravings for a cigarette I haven't had since the first month. Phillip Morris should be a prime performer in your portfolio of evil. Don't forget to stock up on Raytheon!

Companies that make consumer products that everyone has to buy - toilet paper, laundry detergent, shampoo, etc. Watch P&G, Colgate, Church&Dwight, Unilever, Clorox, Kraft, General Mills, etc.

Also, might be time to invest in some home protection - any of the gun manufacturers public?

Master locks- gotta secure those canned goods.

Trojans- seriously, who can afford to have a kid now?

Schwinn- gas is too expensive.

Milton Bradley- who can afford PS3 and X Box games now?

I'm surprised the Private Prison industry isn't doing better this week, but in general they are breaking even since Monday, with some highs on Tuesday (which is fantastic, given the free fall in the rest of the market). Cornell:

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:CRN

"Cornell Companies, Inc. (Cornell) provides correction, detention, education, rehabilitation and treatment services for adults and juveniles..."

Click through on "related companies" for others.

My old boss always said "Roto-Rooter, Campbells, and Service Corporation International. There's three things people won't stop doing."

I vaguely recall reading some articles and books on consumerism during the Great Depression. Apparently personal grooming products sold very well and they was a boom in new products to clean, shave, deoderize, etc products. The theory was that people blamed themselves for their unemployment or other bad luck. If they could just improve themselves a little bit it would give them an edge in the next interview.

So personal hygiene products, weight loss products and fad diets.

I would also invest in temp agencies, resume consultants, and Monstor.com, pay check cashing stores, anyone who makes lottery and gambling equipment, and companies that sell cheap insurance on TV.

Buy stock in Testors. As in, "looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue."

I would think that beer stock would go up--which of course would be good news for john McCain . . .

My old boss always said "Roto-Rooter, Campbells, and Service Corporation International. There's three things people won't stop doing."

You've actually hit on something. We really should stop spending so much on funerals. The average cost of a funeral is I think something like $7K. What a waste of money. The average wedding costs even more. Get married at the courthouse, get buried in a pine box.

I have always said that times like these (financial meltdown or zombie uprising)
call for heavily investing in canned goods and shotguns. Then I see campbells soup goes up. I think maybe I missed my calling in life.

This is the time to invest in strategic metals. When the faeces intersect with the oscillating device, strategic metals will keep their value. I'm long on .45 and .30 cal, but a running low on 9mm. Hmm... might have to cranking out some more.

Usually, Proctor & Gamble does well. And it's making an upward move now. The secret to them is simple: you will always buy soap and toothpaste. And if you walk down that aisle in the supermarket, you will buy one of their products. And you probably didn't even know that you did. It helps having the plurality of brands. If you blindly reach out your arm and grab something, it's probably a P&G product.

Phillip Morris would be an excellent buy. I think they own Miller Brewing and General Mills. You get cigs, food and beer all in one place. An assault weapon would be good to have as well, you might just need it and it will be worth twice as much next year when sales are banned.

@jenga - wrong on Phillip Morris.
Miller was sold to SAB a couple years back. They're(Altria is the parent) is trying to spin off Kraft Foods. Never owned General Mills.
But they do still make ciggies.

Thanks, Kraft was what I was thinking of, but was too lazy to look it up. I knew they had Miller a few years ago, when a broker buddy of mine was touting them as a good buy in a bad economy.

On CNBC they mentioned a company that owns a lot of "pawn brokers and payday loan providers". I forget its name.

Booze, phramaceuticals, and Krispy Kreme.

I actually called our broker on September 12th, 2001, and told him to put my entire 401K into those three. He laughed. I told him, Do it, seriously. He and Robert talked me out of it and said to not panic, to wait it out, etc. etc.

Well, if you followed the markets then, you know what happened next.

Who knows best? Starts with an "M"...

Spam
Geno's Pizzas- $1/ea
Bologna
Wild Irish Rose
Pabst
Natty Lite
Ramen
Starkist Tuna
Hot Dogs

How about dollar stores, movie studios (Hollywood did well in the Great Depression), Devry/ITT Institute/Sally Struthers home study courses, sewing and knitting products, Taco Bell/Waffle House/Denny's, lottery operators, the gambling industry, foreclosure/bankruptcy/reposession specialists, bail bondsmen, bounty hunters, rehab centers, and career and credit advisory services, among others.

Coffee. In fact, Green Mountain Coffee stock has done well over the last few weeks.

Wow. The comment thread on this over at Reason is so much funnier than the one attached to the original article.

maybe because crime goes up during recessions?)

That is why crime plummeted during the great depression and then shot up starting in the mid 1960s. There is no clear correlation.

Here (http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=74061330854280&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=f530a1c2,58d147e7) is a study that says:

Alternative sources of evidence weigh similarly against the hypothesis that income protects adult health. Ruhm (2000, 2005) finds that recessions improve adult health, arguably because individuals engage in healthier lifestyles during downturns—they exercise more, drink less, and smoke less, for example. These patterns probably reflect some combination of job stress and the increased opportunity cost of time during economic booms.22

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