Wall Street: Which Way are the Bulls Running?

The big news over the last week has been Wall Street and the World Markets. Investors who enjoy roller coasters have gotten lots of thrills lately as the investor market dropped in July, rebounded in August, and now is heading once again for the tank.

Self-annointed predictive geniuses have been talking up how America’s influence in world markets has diminished. Well, yeah!... I guess it’s that diminished influence which pulled down stock markets around the world from London’s FTSE to Tokyo’s Nekkei.

The big difference between the July drop and last Friday’s close was that the July drop was mostly blamed on the credit mortgage meltdown, slow housing starts, and defaulted home loans. Friday’s drop of 366 Dow points was indicative of a deeper worry, that the economy is slipping toward more permanent status in the form of recession. For the week, the Dow was down about 500 points. The air is full of dire predictions and people are worried.

As of this moment, the Dow’s down another 100 points and investors are on the sideline, withholding actions until they’re more certain of the direction.

Fox News picked a great time to launch their new business network. I guess Roger Ailes must be a fortunetelling genius of JIT, or “just-in-time” production. That’s a corny joke, I’m sure, but the Fox network financial news is aimed at a market that CNBC Squawk and the Bloomberg channels often ignore. Bloomberg and CNBC Financial are aimed at a small but wealthy demographic whereas the common people (me, for example) need to learn about what they can do protect themselves in a fast-changing world economy.

Fox has some financial mainstays like Neil Cavuto and Charles Payne. But while it has a bevy of unknown but entirely competent (and sometimes pretty) heads, it does not have Street Sweetie Erin Burnett or Money Honey Maria Bartiromo. Not yet, at least, but you can expect some engaging and comely woman of finance to emerge foremost from the pack.