The title of the Academy Award-nominated film “No Country for Old Men” would never apply to the 87-year-old investment adviser and money manger, Charles Allmon, but another nominated title appropriately sums up what he tells me he sees ahead for Wall Street: “There Will Be Blood.”

Sharp, alert, and perceptive, Mr. Allmon, who manages about $125 million of investor assets, beat the market last year with a 7.5% gain, more than double the 3.53% rise in the S&P 500. Remarkably, it was the 33rd consecutive year in which his portfolio chalked up an increase in net assets.

Mr. Allmon, who runs one of the country’s oldest investment newsletters, the Growth Stock Outlook, a 44-year-old bimonthly out of Chevy Chase, Md., is also outperforming this year’s down market, with about a break-even showing. In brief, he says: “We need something like the 1930s,” the years of the Great Depression, during which the stock market got clobbered, “to wash out the excesses of the ’90s and the current real estate market.”

In effect, the specter of a severe economic downturn is precisely what’s popping up on his radar screen, largely spurred by a further and sustained deterioration in housing prices — on the order, he believes, of at least another 15% to 25% from current levels by 2011 or 2012.

“We’re already in a deep recession,” he says. “How deep? Who knows?”

As Mr. Allmon sees it, “with the economy headed for the tank — which will bloody the stock market — whoever wins the White House this year is in for a big disappointment. He (or maybe she) will only be a one-term president, because they’ll be blamed for the economic and stock market chaos.”

What about such economy-boosting moves as aggressive credit easing by the Federal Reserve and the government’s $150 billion fiscal stimulus package?

Mr. Allmon says he doesn’t think they’ll bail out the quickly weakening economy, that they’re too little, too late. Heightening the problem, he says, is the enormous amount of debt carried by the country and its citizens. “It’s off the chart and has to be paid off or liquidated,” he says.

Recent figures show the federal deficit at a record $9 trillion. Also at record levels are consumer debt (23% of the average American household’s net worth) and corporate debt (53.1% of the gross domestic product).

The severe subprime losses suffered by banks and funds also worry Mr. Allmon, who says they have yet to run their course. Goldman Sachs echoes this concern, having recently forecast that bank writedowns could run to $60 billion.

Taking note of the foolish, greedy bankers who precipitated the subprime crisis, Mr. Allmon says it brings back memories of Groucho Marx’s admonition about an associate: “Chicolini here may talk like an idiot and look like an idiot. But don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot!”

In 1810, Joseph Bessimer, a notorious confidence trickster, in a remark often attributed to P.T. Barnum, noted that “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

Mr. Allmon reckons that today’s sucker is a fully invested investor. “Anyone without a lot of cash,” he predicts, “will be butchered. It’s a very dangerous market, but the problem is many investors don’t grasp that fact because they’re not looking at reality.” As such, he says roughly 23% to 25% of the people in the market today shouldn’t be there because of its high-risk profile.

That view is based on his belief that the market is headed south big time. In actual numbers, he sees the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting to between 8,500 and 9,000 by 2010 from yesterday’s close of 12,247. “If I’m wrong, my numbers are on the high side,” he says.

Mr. Allmon is so convinced his bearish outlook is on the target that he’s turned ultra-cautious, placing a hefty 75% of the assets of his managed accounts in cash reserves. “We may well go to 85% soon,” he says.

That doesn’t mean he’s against all stocks. He favors a trio of high dividend payers (4% or more), namely Altria, owner of Philip Morris, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and GlaxoSmithKline.

Portfolio protection through gold ownership is also strongly recommended by our bear. His top picks: Newmont Mining and Barrick Gold.

Mr. Allmon says a third of any stock portfolio should definitely be in foreign securities. Here, he favors such countries as Australia, Germany, Spain, and Canada. He regards China as particularly dangerous, noting that the world’s fastest-growing economy is America’s biggest customer. A slowing American economy, he says, could in turn appreciably slow China, raising the possibility, he believes, of as much as a 50% decline in its go-go stock market.

Wrapping up his arguments, Mr. Allmon observes: “The feel-good market is over and the bulls unfortunately are living in an unreal world.”

dandordan@aol.com