First it’s Japan, and now India. 

When Toyota announced its first annual profit drop in nine years, it pointed to the U.S. as the culprit. Then, in the same breath, Toyota acknowledged a stronger shift to emerging markets like China, Latin America and the Middle East. That was on May 8th.

Four days later, India outsourcing tech giants Satyam Computer Services (NYSE: SAY), Infosys Technologies (Nasdaq: INFY) and Wipro Technologies (NYSE: WIT) are giving the U.S. the bum’s rush as well.

In a May 12th article in the India Times, the three major IT outsourcers, which have a combined market cap of $52.7 billion, said that they’re moving on to emerging markets as the U.S. “lurches towards recession in the wake of the subprime crisis.”

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Whenever Big Media sounds off about the Man Cave, my testosterone begins to boil.

It’s funny, they say, how some regular guy has carved out a bit of space in his basement to play Guitar Hero III, watch baseball all weekend and plaster his walls with photos of NASCAR great, Dale Earnhardt. Here, the Man Cave dweller can smoke cigars with his buds, pig-out on pizza and swill cold beer.

Yes, it’s another feel-good goof from Big Media about the American working stiff making it through his humdrum, so-called life.

But what are the real implications of this Man Cave scourge? Or, with a riff on Freud, “What do men really want?”

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Anyone in favor of going down with the ship, raise your hand.

That’s what I thought.

So I suggest you read this excerpt from Fareed Zakaria’s new book called “Rise of the Rest.” You can find it here. And if you’d like to learn more about Fareed in general, his web site is here.

Now before we continue with Fareed, I’d like to draw another piece of news to your attention. It’s about Toyota’s slowdown of U.S. sales — causing the auto giant’s first annual profit decline in nine years.

As you’ll see in a moment, the message shared by Fareed and Toyota will have a profound impact on where you’re going to invest next.

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“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

That outburst is enshrined in movie history. It’s from the 1976 satire “Network,” which went on to win four Academy Awards.

The now-famous line gave fire to a diatribe by a news anchor named Howard Beale with declining ratings. Played by the great Peter Finch, he urges Americans to yell it out their windows during a dazzling lightning storm.

Beale rants “Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.” Continue Reading »