Everybody hurts. The Hindenburg is imploding. We’re up, we’re down, we’re up, we’re down. And nobody knows what’s going on. Oh, the humanity!

As the machine creaks to earth spewing hot gas, those who rigged it up to blow continue to do their jobs to help it do so. When things looked good, they honked their horns and smashed their drums and marched down the Street like hopped-up tweakers at a perpetual Mardi Gras. The Dow at 36,000! There’s no downside in YOUR COMPANY HERE.

The street musicians, drunks and satyrs have awakened to the smell of a dark and rainy morning. So now they perform as required. The Dow at 5000! There’s no upside in YOUR COMPANY/SECTOR/ENTIRE ECONOMY HERE. 

The analysts do their part. They come to work every morning and have to do something between breakfast, lunch and drinks. So they write their reports on every company in their sectors. YOUR COMPANY HERE is down! Revenues are flat! Boy, do they stink! Of course, yes, they’re part of the larger market, and the economy is sort of in free fall and the bears are running through the street eating all life forms in their path… but YOUR COMPANY HERE must be singled out. Why? Because it’s their job to single out YOUR COMPANY HERE. If they didn’t, what would they do all day?

The business reporters fall in line as well. They come to work every morning and have to do something between muffins, burgers and beers. So they cover the analysts who write the reports on YOUR COMPANY HERE, and the graphics guys work up their charts, which all look like a snowboarder’s dream, and yes, they put in a paragraph somewhere in there about how YOUR COMPANY HERE is part of the larger market, part of its segment, part of the meltdown of global capitalism, but they wouldn’t be doing their jobs unless they took apart YOUR COMPANY HERE when it was time to do so. And don’t forget the headline writers. In an atmosphere where it’s too depressing to read the stories, this is their time to shine.

Finally there are, of course, the guys who finance the deals. They’re taking the bailout money and working working working to count it, stack it, sock it away for an even rainier day. So no credit from them, nohow. No credit, no deals. No deals? What’s there to talk about? YOUR COMPANY HERE.

So wherever you go, there you are. Nobody can say we’re not all working as hard as little beavers.  At this point, however, maybe we should ask ourselves a question: wouldn’t we all be a lot better off if a whole strata of the infrastructure of investment capital simply knocked it off for a couple of months and let the fumes clear? Chewing away at our jobs as usual doesn’t seem to be doing anybody any good.

I just spent a few minutes on a variety of websites. I’m not going to single them out, not because they’re not good (of course they are, they’re quite deft and professional and excellent in every way).

They just made me want to kill myself.

Now, as lachrymose as I may be at times, this is a solution to life’s problems that has rarely occurred to me since I was out of college and stopped reading Kafka for laughs. But I believe it would now be easy to make the case that this is the worst things have been since the Depression of the 1930s. Looking at the news, it’s possible to come to the conclusion that any light anybody sees at the end of this tunnel is an oncoming train.

The last time this happened to our economy, the public had one great solution to the challenge of keeping the national spirits up: stupid movies. This explains the entertainments that were popular between 1929 and World War II. Screwball comedies. Musicals featuring concentric circles of feathered women dancing, swimming. Horse operas.

The Internet now faces a similar opportunity which, if not taken at its crest, may lead to the demise of the medium. This is most true, I think, of financial websites, which may, if they are not careful, assume the role of the cranky old uncle at the wake who sits in a chair in the corner and refuses to get drunk with the rest of the mourners.

The job here is quite clear: to amuse as well as inform, and to give people something to think about while we all wait out this suicidal swoon brought about, in large part, by the same people who still control the message issued by the markets. Lehman Brothers (LEH), for instance, recently wrote down a staggering amount as a testament to its lack of overall comprehension in advance of current events. Yet Monday, when its analyst wrote down the entire media sector, Wall Street jumped off the ledge along with him. Go figure.

But the hell with that. That’s not going to change. What we can change is the agenda of what we’re putting into our heads. Do we need to hear about more layoffs? More writedowns? More end-of-the-world scenarios? I think not!

Instead, let’s consider the following:

• Summertime brings with it great weather and a chance to relax… except for those who have to stay at home with a bunch of screaming kids and can’t go on that vacation away from it all because of the price of fuel driving the cost of travel through the roof…

No, wait. That’s not right. Sorry. Let’s start over.

• There has never been a better time to buy an automobile! Prices are way down, incentives are up, and some companies are even paying for two years of free gasoline in order to get you into the showroom… because… well… hm.

Okay, then. Let’s try this:

• The marketplace now offers a host of fabulously-priced securities that are quite literally trading at a fraction of their true value. If you believe in the system, and that this old economy of ours will come roaring back very soon, now is absolutely the time to pick up all those terrific properties that are hopefully trading at all time lows.
• Homes, too, are now available that were once out of reach, as more and more people are forced to default on their mortgages and surrender their family abodes to the harsh gavel of foreclosure.
• And puppies are still so darned cute!

See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?

So we’re officially in a bear market. You don’t have to tell anybody in a publicly traded company about it, of course. We’re in it every day. We feel it in a million different ways, in everything we do. Here are just a few: 

• When you talk with a reporter covering your business, they can barely lift their heads from their tabletops. They sigh. They mutter. They can barely come up with coherent questions. “So…” they murmur into the phone, their hearts heavy with impending layoffs and industry doom, “… what’s the rationale for your acquisition/divestiture/other again?” Much of the time, they haven’t even read the associated documentation. They’re just too sad to party. 
• When you talk with an analyst about your business, they can barely lift their heads from their tabletops. They snarl. They growl. They are defensive about their indices. Their last six write-ups have been dead wrong for a variety of reasons, but analysts have a tough time being wrong, they are never actually wrong, not really. Something must be wrong with YOU that made them be wrong, so they are quite naturally churlish about your whole situation. There is no upside. Why do you keep talking about one? 
• When you talk with sale people, they can barely lift their heads from their tabletops. Their knuckles are red with knocking on doors that will not open. 
• When you talk to merchandisers, automotive manufacturers and others who must advertise in order to sell their products, they can barely… well, you know. They cannot buy ads because their have less free cash flow with which to do so, but if they do not sell ads they will not move product and so will not have cash to buy ads and move product. They are hamsters on a wheel, with the smell of yesterday’s sawdust in their nostrils. 
• When you talk to investors… it’s not advisable. They will chew your face off if you do. 

Except for the guys who saw the dark side all along. The short sellers. The crafty few who saw the whole thing coming all along and bet correctly on which way the water would spin on its way down the vortex. They’re the ones walking down the Street, whistling a merry tune. Makes you want to smash them, don’t it?