The results are akin to the hapless ski jumper at the opening of Wide World of Sports, who slips, falls, flails, smashes through a banner, and lands with a resounding thud on the landing pad.

Pay attention: you are at risk and statins can be of enormous benefit. (And improper legislation may prevent women from having access to such a beneficial product).

Let's get into its September 17th report and take it apart.

We want to see three other things from hotel companies in these times. We want to make sure interest payments are, in the aggregate, being made. We want that preferred dividend payment being made. We want capex kept to a minimum. Ashford had already been smart enough to suspend their common dividend last December, saving them upwards of $80 million annually -- and every such dollar is precious.

Their pawn business is doing great, particularly in Mexico. US pawn same-store sales were up 4%, and Mexican was up a whopping 29% on a constant currency basis. The company continues its aggressive expansion into Mexico and can expect smooth sailing there, as the country does not have a usury cap -- and that's written into the Constitution.

I’ve pulled together some very compelling data from a myriad of sources including G7 Capital Management, a private equity firm specializing in distressed real estate. It’s using this data that I’ll lay out exactly why I feel the people that are calling for a bottom are the soon-to-be victims of a massive head fake; why the nightmare has a long way to go; and how you might be able to profit from it.

The company sits on $240 million of unrestricted cash.

Long Answer: There was much sturm und drang over Extended Stay America’s (ESA) Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on Monday. Of primary concern to this investor is how the filing may affect Ashford Hospitality Trust’s (AHT) $98 million mezzanine loan that was made to ESA last year.

Cash America (CSH) is still going strong, but has a few challenges. The PDL market is pretty much saturated in this country and they’ve had challenges from the numbnuts in the Ohio legislature that curtailed business over there. Their Q1 conference call explains things in great detail. However, Cash America’s management is top-notch and forward-looking. Their purchase of online lender CashNetUSA was outstanding. That business accounts for some 60% of loan volume and 92% of operating income at this point. They’ve added gold buying and pawn loan services at many Ohio locations. They purchased Mexican lender Prenda Facil, joining other PDLs in the great Mexican PDL Gold Rush. They also just closed on a $100 million senior convertible offering at 5.25% to pay off debt. The company is still a bargain, given earnings growth of 10% based on current estimates of $3.06. The stock price of $22.50 gives it a p/e of 8.5. I think this is another candidate for savvy traders and investors. One of my favorite plays is to take an undervalued stock like this, sell naked puts for a number of shares I wouldn’t mind holding long if they get put to me. The July 22.50 puts, for example, returns a terrific 7% if unexecuted.

In times of strife, Americans did what they have always done: gathered around the television. The company added 461,000 net new domestic subscribers in both the fourth quarter of 2008 and Q1 2009, the best quarterly results in four years. Their churn rate is only 1.33%, the lowest in ten years. First quarter operating profit was down, but that’s due to the company’s increased advertising, leading to higher customer acquisition costs.

A quick recap of Ohio payday lending. Last year, a politically-motivated firestorm against PDLs took place. When it was discovered that a Democratic Assemblywoman had a husband who lobbied for PDLs in Virginia, Republicans orchestrated political payback by backing a law designed to kill PDLs. The new law, called the Short Term Loan Act, put a 28% APR cap in place, a rate at which lenders could not survive.

Citron's tactic is to make moral judgments about World to soften readers up and make them more likely to accept bogus claims about the state of World's financials and its business model. Citron's National Enquirer headline, screaming at readers in bold, claims that "Financials at World are worse than they appear".

Setting aside the outrageous accusations of World Acceptance being a "borderline-legal Ponzi scheme", Citron either doesn't understand installment loans, or is manipulating the truth to their own ends. Installment lenders exist because the old finance companies like Beneficial are gone. They serve the market of folks who need to borrow about a thousand bucks, and want to be able to repay it over a long period of time. With installment loans, customers can borrow more than with a payday loan, and take much longer to repay it. It hardly "takes advantage of society's most vulnerable". If anything, it give these folks access to credit they cannot get anywhere else. Since the loans are unsecured, they naturally carry higher rates and fees.

When Marvel began its makeover early in the decade, the company generated revenue from its comic books, toys, and license fees Hollywood studios paid to make some of those comics into films – the biggest being the Spider-Man series. I liked this model because the movie business is insanely risky and it guaranteed Marvel would generate revenue without taking any risk.

Neither he nor Lewis Carroll could have expected this story would be a metaphor for the payday loan debate. Stocks in this sector are First Cash Financial Services (FCFS), EZCorp (EZPW), Cash America (CSH), QC Holdings (QCCO), Dollar Financial (DLLR), Advance America (AEA).

Senator Richard Durbin has a curious new bill he's flogging around Washington. The deceptively titled S. 500, "Protecting Consumers from Unreasonable Rates of Credit Act", only serves Sen. Durbin and his big banking contributors. Why? Because it seeks to effectively eliminate all forms of short-term credit except one – bounced check fees from banks.

The November 2008 FDIC Study of Bank Overdraft Programs (ODP) proves beyond the shadow of a doubt what we've known all along: payday loans are a much cheaper short-term credit alternative than bank overdraft protection programs.

• Diluted EPS up 35%
• Net income from continuing operations up 28%
• YTD same-store revenue up 13%
• Quarterly same store revenue up 8%
• Mexican pawn revenue up 38% YOY, and 31% QOQ
• Q4 merchandise pawn sales across all stores up 27%, pawn fees up 20%
• Retail pawn merchandise sales gross margin of 45%
• FY cash flow of almost $43 million