Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

A: A lot more about the health of big players in several key industries.

Look over the list of scheduled earnings reports this week, and you’ll see plenty of potentially interesting stories shaping up between these players:

• Pharmaceuticals: Amgen, Merck, and Schering-Plough on Monday; Eli Lilly on Tuesday; GlaxoSmithKline on Wednesday; and AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb on Thursday.
• Chemicals: DuPont on Tuesday; 3M, Dow Chemical, and Eastman Chemical on Thursday. (This doesn’t count the top petroleum companies, all of which have big chemicals divisions.)
• Airlines: JetBlue and UAL on Tuesday; US Airways on Thursday.
• Defense contractors: Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman on Tuesday; Boeing and General Dynamics on Wednesday; Raytheon on Thursday.
• Oil producers: BP on Tuesday; ConocoPhillips on Wednesday; Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday; and Chevron on Friday.
• House builders: Pulte on Wednesday; Beazer Homes and D.R. Horton on Thursday. (This could get ugly.)
• Car makers: Nissan Motor on Tuesday; DaimlerChrysler and Honda Motor on Wednesday; and Ford Motor on Thursday.

On Wednesday we’ll also get to see if the New York Times and the Tribune Company will fare as poorly as their newspaper brethren did last week.

The mind reels at what all we could see, even though chances are good that only one or two of these will really turn into something meaty.