Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

A quick wrapup to the day:

• Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider has been all over the AOL layoffs even when they were just rumors, instead of nasty, here-and-now reality for 2,000 people. His posts here and here are highly informative, both for Blodget’s own commentary and especially for the, shall we say, highly candid assessments of AOL by its own staff. (A printable excerpt: “Sad, so very sad, to see AOL continuing its sad decline.” Do click over to read the rest; AOL has a lot of bitter people, both laid off and sticking around, to deal with.)
  • Confirmed: AOL Laying Off 2,000: Randy Falco Email
  • AOL (TWX): Live Layoff Coverage
• Geoff Styles offers some brief thoughts on what $100 oil — now imaginable in ways it wasn’t even a month back — would mean. This is an especially useful post because it links back to other work he’s done on topics like the real inflation-adjusted price of oil and the connection between the weak dollar and the oil futures market.
  • $100 or Bust?
• At WorldChanging, Mindy Lubber talks about some of the many ways that Wall Street is closer than the White House to Al Gore’s position on climate change.
  • Wall Street Takes Al Gore’s Cue on Climate Change

My own take on this last subject: If a Democrat wins the Presidency in 2008, it’s a given than he or she will take a very different stance on the environment than President Bush has. If a Republican wins, the Wall Street moves that Lubber describes will make it much easier for him to move away from the hard line taken by the current Administration and toward the position staked out by Goldman Sachs et al.