AlixPartners, one of the firms charged with helping General Motors navigate its way through bankruptcy, performed liquidation analysis as part of the company's court proceedings, and its findings are disturbing: If GM liquidated tomorrow, there would be less than $10 billion in net proceeds.

The New York Times reports that "bank lenders owed $5.4 billion would recover from 26.3 to 77.1 cents on the dollar. The United States Treasury, on the hook for $20.5 billion, fares even worse under this scenario, getting just 12.7 cents to 23.7 cents on the dollar for its claims. Unsecured creditors would get nothing." (emphasis added)

Ahhh, Circuit City. Where service is state of the art! The chain of electronics retailers -- currently liquidating at a furious rate -- will be all but defunct as of Sunday, March 8. The "bulk" of the stores still left open are targeting this as their last day.

Although the chain very nearly ruined one of my favorite songs (The Cars' "Just What I Needed") by employing it as their jingle, I have a soft spot in my heart for the red-themed Big Box location. I frequented it long before Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE: BBY) was in my world, I bought my first laptop there, and it was my CD shopping destination of choice in the late 1990s. Thank you, Circuit City employees, for never laughing at my purchase of the latest from NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys, Mandy Moore, or others.

"In a period like this, the way you make money coming out of it is to own the things where the fundamentals have not been impaired." Such are the words of investment guru Jim Rogers.

In a quick yet effective interview with CNBC, Jim Rogers laid out his concerns about the way in which boiling financial troubles are being handled. Rogers lays responsibility directly at the feet of Ben Bernanke and crew, with a side plate of crow for some of the biggest Wall Street talking heads. Rogers warns that the practice of throwing cash at this problem, with the intention of providing liquidity from the top down, is an unquestionable recipe for inflationary disaster. I would hasten to agree with him.

Jim Rogers indicates his opinion that this entire economic disaster needs to be allowed to self adjust. In the mean time, he counsels investors to be carefully placing their money in positions which, while possibly being liquidated, remain fundamentally sound. He points at commodities, which are physical retainers of true value, as instruments of some protection. He does indicate though, that he has taken some losses in commodities. It is my opinion that commodities are currently swinging downward on profit taking and shall soon begin another upward phase.

Rogers also gave his opinion that the G7 needs to have a beer and leave this mess alone. He sees the artificial propping up of world banks as futile. "We had the worst excesses we had in credit markets in world history. We're going to have to take some pain," Rogers told CNBC.

It's like this, folks: If you built a dam, and after the dam was full you discovered that there was no mortar between the bricks, you wouldn't build a new dam in front of the old one, hoping it would hold when everything lets go. Instead, you would warn the people in the valley about what was coming and you'd let the dam collapse. Then, you'd try to control the carnage and you'd build a better dam ---- using different contractors.

But of course, that's just my opinion.

Every dark cloud has a distress sale. That's the old saying, isn't it? Well, perhaps things look pretty bad for the mortgage industry, but I can guarantee you one thing. Real estate investors are eagerly awaiting for the dust to settle so they can pounce on distressed properties which will need to be liquidated for pennies on the dollar. I can hear them drooling from here.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but last time I checked, commercial banks aren't especially fond of holding title to single family dwellings. Given the possibility that nearly 2 million homes are slated for foreclosure in the next year, that could make for a lot of motivated selling. Many of those distressed homes are in highly desirable areas and I'm sure that there will be plenty of duplexes and quad unit apartment buildings caught up in the fray. The board rooms of large real estate holding companies must feel like war rooms right about now.

If you would like to get a feel for our government's official position on the matter, have a look at The Real Estate Realist. You will find insight there into what has been officially declared by the Joint Economic Committee as its position on the matter. The committee press release, peppered with words such as loss, destroyed and catastrophe, does little to ease national concerns about a real estate scene in flux. In fact, what I read of the release could be characterized as an astounding declaration of the obvious. I will concede however that the report did make nice use of a tsunami metaphor.

If you have a lump of cash that you'd like to invest in something that you can set your feet on, now is the time to begin your research. It's time to begin surveying the field but don't be too eager to move in for the kill just yet. The massive real estate devaluation that seems to be impending has not yet gotten up to speed. I have a feeling that there will be absolutely astounding regional real estate bargains beginning to surface going into the second quarter of 2008 as cash strapped banks scramble to unload real estate they have no desire to hold on to.