STRATEGIC INVESTING

In his 1979 best seller, Crisis Investing, Casey advised liquidating real estate and stocking up on gold. At the time, these and similar recommendations were considered little short of lunatic; in the aftermath, attention must be paid. What Casey offers now is a rambling, almost ingratiating treatise on how to survive and thrive in the inflationary--or perhaps deflationary--depression that's apparently under way. Despite occasional lapses into idiosyncratic social commentary (of the ultraconservative or libertarian sort), he provides a series of logical investment advisories that make sense whatever happens in Washington. Among other things, Casey counsels converting unused or otherwise superfluous personal possessions into cash--yes, even via garage sales--and putting the proceeds to work; along similarly provident lines, he recommends borrowing (at fixed rates whenever possible) only for capital commitments, not consumer goods. (Pro tern, home rental is a better deal than ownership due to cost lags; there's time enough to pick up residential bargains after the real crash.) Casey also recommends acquiring commodities selling at or below their production costs. But with the exception of the one money-market fund in ten that concentrates on US Treasury obligations, fixed-income vehicles have no place in the Casey cosmos. He is, however, bullish on equities--owing to an ongoing flight from debased currency rather than any improvement in economic fundamentals. Among his favorite plays are utilities (on the expectation that government will not let the industry go under), uranium producers (the ""gold stocks of the 1980s,"" assuming, as the author does, federal regulators give nuclear power a break), and gaming issues (on the bet hyperinflation will foster an eat-drink-and-be-merry mentality among the affluent). With this wide-angle effort, Casey has earned himself a general as well as true-believer readership.