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Maven: Unusual Bedfellows

Marek Fuchs

If you think your parents were an unlikely pair, get a load of what Automotive News reports this morning.

Ford(F) and General Motors(GM) have, it says, talked merger and alliance.

Meanwhile, over in the newspaper business, The Wall Street Journal gives an update on the latest in one of the most interesting standoffs in recent corporate history.

The Los Angeles Times' editor and publisher have been refusing Tribune's(TRB) demands for more job cuts. If nothing else, the two should at least earn a few days' good credit on cutting the line in the newsroom cafeteria.

The Journal reports that now, a group of powerful local citizens is leaning on Tribune to sell the paper to them.

This won't work, says Tribune. (Speaking of alliances, it uses Los Angeles Times articles as filler for its other troubled papers.) No word on any alliance between Tribune and the Taurus brand.

But The International Herald Tribune reports on the latest failed newspaper.

Liberation, founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and a bunch of communists, has, apparently, no longer been paying its workers. It's actually a miracle that it lasted this long, as the paper used to refuse advertising.

Now it's thinking of going the capitalist route and selling shares to readers. From commies to capitalists who think there is a sucker born every minute; The Business Press Maven smells progress.

One of the most commonly lamented aspects of the American economy is a top reason that The Business Press Maven is bullish about our nation's long-term economic prospects, despite housing's coming downfall and no matter what sort of dolt warms the White House.

Manufacturing, that dirty, cyclical, low-margin, recession-prone and physically exhausting former basis of the American economy, is in permanent decline.

And don't let the door hit it on the way out.

For anyone who wants a corroborating opinion as to why this stirs such good cheer in The Business Press Maven, check out this article in Barron's.

An interesting factoid: "While manufacturing has been in decline as a percentage of total employment and total output measured in dollars, real manufacturing output has lately been growing at a year-over-year rate of 4.4%, and at a 10-year annualized rate of 3.7% -- a bit above the long-term rate of GDP growth."

More importantly, as far as the world's economic outlook stands, manufacturing's influence on the world economy has not fallen under its own weight but been overtaken by the service economy.

You want better long-term prospects? Pick that service-based economy behind door No. 1 over that flawed old manufacturing economy everyone's pining for behind door No. 2.

The latest from the story that keeps on giving? The Hewlett-Packard(HPQ) spying was more extensive and more supervised than previously stated, reports The New York Times. A reporter may have been followed.

A detective tried to put software in the computer of another reporter, and even a company spokesman became a target. At various times, questions about the legality of the snooping were brought up and then shrugged off. A listening bug was put in one of The Business Press Maven's filings (just kidding, I hope).

But the lesson? When a story seems too weird for words, it will have legs, going in as-yet-unimagined directions. There will, by the end, be a lot of words written.

Interestingly enough, The Business Press Maven put himself in contention for his own "Back of the Hand" award this week, by reporting matter of factly that Patricia Dunn was, as I put it with smug cleverness, "done" as the company's chairwoman.

Sure, the company made her stand down as chairwoman because of her involvement in degenerate corporate activity, but the real issue -- and the one I missed -- was that because she remains on the company's board, her "firing" was little more than a hollow gesture.

The reckoning was delayed -- only more evidence that the sordid story would drag on.

This mess has not yet taken any toll on H-P's stock price.

This was because of the media's initial assumption that the story would blow over quickly, combined with the recent overall strength of the market.

But I would stay clear of the stock until this long, strange trip of a story plays out.

Jeff Matthews sells himself short, in a sense, in his blog. The Business Press Maven, who likes to read Matthews, was busy agreeing with a recent point Matthews made about the look of Dollar General(DG) stores.

To wit: They look lame. As in: totally.

I had just been paying attention to the look of these stores, figuring that their time in the economic cycle may have come. But the comeback of Dollar General has been a frequently anticipated event on Wall Street, and one that has not come to fruition in many a year.

Spurred by the latest buy report that mentioned "store-related enhancements" (holy jargon, Batman), Matthews took a little road trip across the South to see a half-dozen stores.

He quotes Mick Jagger saying they'd make a grown man cry (I agree) and then apologized for not conducting a more scientific search (I disagree). Appraising retailers is as much art as science, and though The Business Press Maven usually wants journalists to use bigger samples than they do, six is fine when talking about a retail chain.

If you can't, for example, come to the conclusion after seeing six Gaps(GPS) that their concept is careworn, well, you won't be able to at 12.

The Wall Street Journal Asia reports that Wal-Mart(WMT) will launch a credit card in China, probably the first issued by a foreign retailer.

And talk about doing something new and risky in retailing: A big city department store is actually building a new location.

This hasn't happened in a while, but Women's Wear Daily reports on the coming (Sept. 28) opening of a 330,000-square-foot Bloomingdales in San Francisco.

Jeff, in this case a one-store sample is scientifically valid.