In Business News…Well, It Ain’t Good!

While I have had my way with companies and industries alike, I haven’t spoke much about the market as a whole, so after a stellar day yesterday I thought I’d kick it around a bit. The Dow was up 889 points yesterday, the second highest gain in a single day ever….did you make any money?

Should be good news right?

In spite of record-low consumer confidence the Dow shot through the friggin’ roof, but I bet if you asked 100 traders on the floor of the NYSE why, none of them would be able to give you an answer. It seems we are all just trying to keep hold of the tiger’s tail until this market turns around for good.

Banks still not lending

On any given day the Dow will swing up 400 then down 600 and back up 200 and then who knows where it will stop by the end of the day. One thing is for sure, the days of a narrow trading range are far off in the distance as we routinely see double digit percentage moves on both the Dow and the NASDAQ. Meanwhile the banks are spending the money we lent them on everything but what it was intended for and the White House has had to step in and start smacking them around.

Which is worse, the car business or the newspaper business?

Over in Michigan, the auto manufacturers are taking a road trip to Washington to perform their best Oliver Twist “Please Sir, I want some more” routine while the world collectively waits for John McCain to get bitch slapped back to Arizona by Obama next week.

Newspapers could be the next late night Sally Struthers infomercial you see as venerable players like the New York Times teeter on the brink of collapse. How Rupert over at News Corp is making money in the paper business is beyond me but God bless ya my man. It’s gotten so bad in the paper biz that even God’s work is being curtailed as the Christian Science Monitor moves to a weekly publication.

Could your favorite Magazine be next?

Magazines are finding it harder and harder to justify their existence these days. It’s a tough job running a monthly right now. Which reminds me, if you’re reading this and you are a media buyer and you’re still putting money into magazines, stop reading this blog right now since you obviously have no reason being in the business world. I mean honestly, how you can justify the ROI when I am using the stacks of magazines in my office as furniture? Conversely, I get upset when I’m a day behind on my RSS feeds, I start to sweat if I get past two days. In other words, MagazineDeathPool.com, the site where magazines go to die, must be pretty busy these days.

When will it get better?

But I guess it’s difficult to determine what industry is going to be hardest hit in this market. One thing’s for sure; there are more bad times ahead in the short term; credit default swaps coming home to roost, LIBOR rates, and President Bush sneaking into hostile countries in the middle of the night to drink beer and shot off fireworks all make us yearn for the simple days when the most you had to worry about was your President getting head in the oval office.