So much for my prediction here yesterday that bulls would celebrate the release of payroll figures on Friday no matter how many new jobs were alleged to have been added to the U.S. economy. As it happened, the number fell well shy of estimates ' 51,000 new non-farm jobs versus an expected 125,000. Ordinarily we might have expected such a big shortfall to send stocks soaring, since weak employment figures tend to make the usual bunch of idiots salivate over the prospect of more Fed easing. Perhaps this scenario has become too pat to work? In any event, stocks struggled all day to say above water, finally closing moderately lower on the day. The Rick's Picks chart room was abuzz with rumors all the while, including some deep-throat stuff concerning a couple of our favorite gold stocks. Subscribers can access the discussion thread which identifies these stocks simply by clicking on the 'Chat' button at the bottom of the main page. The source of much of this hearsay is a chat-room denizen who seems to have more connections to the world of financial and geopolitical intrigue than Knights Templar insiders in The DaVinci Code. A GM Bankruptcy? One decidedly non-insider piece of news that may have weighed on stocks Friday was Kirk Kerkorian's announcement that he won't be buying any more GM shares. In the chat room this catalyzed speculation that he might be fixing to bail out entirely, pending GM's supposedly imminent declaration of bankruptcy. If so, it sounds like the kind of news that would drive stocks wildly higher, since even the most spectacular corporate disasters these days - think Amaranth -- seemed to be perceived on Wall Street as little more than a salubrious cleansing of the air. A GM bankruptcy is something I have long expected -- with our
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