Stocks That Shine in a 'Zombie Economy'

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The hardest time, emotionally speaking, to buy even the best-of-breed companies' stocks is when fear levels are rising and rational logic is being thrown out the window.

That's the scenario right now in the financial markets of the world, and the "scared-e-cat" contagion has taken hold again on Wall Street U.S.A.

Yes, the jobs report on Friday was as bad if not worse than many of us were anticipating. For the third month in a row the number of new jobs created was well below the 100,000 level.

For June it was around 80,000 jobs, and that was after May's disappointing 77,000 payrolls and April's even scarier 68,000 number, making the second quarter the worst quarter for jobs in two years.

Right now the most powerful voices in the world of financial media are coming out with headlines and stories that make investors as nervous as a long-tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

A good example of this is a CNBC story, "Signs We are Approaching a Zombie Economy." If I have my terminologies correct, a zombie is also known as "the Walking Dead"! Yikes and horrors!

The story has some blood-curdling quotes, guaranteed to tempt investors toward the exit doors and emotionally charged to push the "sell" buttons.

"CRT Capital Senior Treasury Strategist Ian Lyngen said the economy feels zombie-like. The risk taking animal spirits have yet to return," he said.

As I've been pounding the table and saying lately, the potential for using the debt crisis in Europe as yet another good dose of fright in order to justify a chilling plunge in stock prices continues.

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"The U.S. economy has been unable to achieve escape velocity but the amount of monetary and fiscal stimulus in the system has proven adequate enough to keep it going at a 1% to 2% GDP pace.

"That is slow by historic recovery standards...it feels like a 'zomb'-economy," said Lyngen. "People are increasingly worried about a double dip," he said.

Ah yes, that's the perfect storm for the kind of stock market mayhem needed to do two things. One, it allows the already beaten-down bargains to fall to even more ridiculously low price levels.

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