The Annals of Financial Journalism

By the time I disembarked my plane yesterday afternoon in California, the stock market had already closed. I overheard someone who I guess checked the stock numbers right after landing remarking to someone that the Dow was up over 800 points. Naturally, I was curious to see what kind of pseudo-explanation the astrologers who cover this stuff for newspapers would come up with:

Wall Street indexes staged a rally on Tuesday afternoon as expectations of a federal interest rate cut helped lure investors back into the market, despite new signs that the broader economy continued to weaken.

It’s like they’re barely even trying anymore. Surely the very same rate cut that was expected on Monday was also expected to be coming down the pike on Friday. A rate cut is, under the circumstances, a no brainer. And if stocks had been down, they would have written that indexes “crashed on Tuesday amid signs that the broader economy continued to weaken, despite expectations of a federal interest rate cut.”

I’m told that Keynes wrote that “When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.”