Maven: Doing a Jobs on Apple

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With emerging stocks submerging on Tuesday and Apple(AAPL) catapulting on the strength of a phone product with the battery life of a June bug, The Business Press Maven wants first to focus on the truly incredible news of the day: evidence of morality on Wall Street.

Are the waters actually safer for investors? Well, I wouldn't go that far. But it is interesting that a big flashing neon sign saying "Decent Ethics Here" does not seem to have been mentioned much (if at all) by the business media.

Shares of Gap(GPS), the troubled retail behemoth, actually went up Monday when CNBC reported that the company had hired Goldman Sachs to "explore options," including selling itself. In most of the coverage that followed, reporters looked at a proposed price tag of $18 billion (more than The Business Press Maven makes in two entire years), asked analysts about it and rightly concluded that it's going to be hard to find a live buyer. Or a dead one.

But -- though maybe I missed a single random mention -- in all the interviewing of analysts that I read (from a Forbes piece to a MarketWatch story headlined, "Sell Gap while the going's good, say analysts," and so on), it does not seem to be noted that Goldman Sachs, hired to do the investment banking, has a sell on the stock.