Things seem to be calm but tense in the markets. Perhaps no news is good news after all.

• Today, a less than stellar retail sales report has dragged the market down, along with high oil prices and some words of caution from Ben Bernanke. These are the market fluctuations you should expect, though, as the market tries to figure out which direction the economy will go.
• JPMorgan has handed job offers to about 6000 Bear Stearns employees. CEO James Dimon’s basically gone through the first round of job offers, probably giving offers to the high performers and necessary positions. There’s about 14,000 people who worked at Bear Stearns when it crashed, and we all knew this would be coming.

  Oh, and Dimon also predicts that the recession has just begun, even if the credit crunch has passed.

• The automotive industry has not done well in recent years, but GM’s president says the auto industry is absolutely in recession. Both GM and Ford have been pummeled by union contracts, overseas competition, and their inability to predict consumer demand.
• Although the poor shape of the auto industry is no surprise, the decline of the porn industry is. The pornographic industry, usually considered “recession-proof” (did I mention I hate that term?), has dipped nearly 30% in DVD sales. A combination of new internet media and poor market conditions have hit the industry hard, although it has always had the knack for…bouncing back.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 1:43 pm and is filed under News and Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.