Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

I try not to get too “meta” with my analysis of what’s going on in the business world — no simplistic stories about stories about stories if I can help it. But it occurs to me that the recent binge of financial news (it’s been going on for many months, now) stems from at least two sources — and that it’s important to keep the two distinct as we read the business news:

1. The actual importance of news emanating from the financial markets. There’s no question that the “mortgage meltdown,” the “credit crunch,” and attendant phenomena are not just important but highly important for the entire world of business. They affect how companies finance their operations; rates of foreclosure and bankruptcy; mergers, acquisitions, and layoffs; big-time executive shifts; and on and on. These effects are real and they’re meaningful, and to that extent the floodtide of financial reporting is useful.
2. The sometimes envious, often adulatory, celebrity-style coverage of financial firms and moguls. This “finance pr0n” is not very different from what US Magazine or People does with stars from Hollywood or famous bands. In this world, what Steve Schwarzman does matters not because (or not primarily because) Blackstone is a big-time player in the world of commerce, but because he’s Steve Schwarzman, and we want to know what Steve Schwarzman is doing. This is not different, at bottom, from wanting to know what’s happening with Brangelina and their growing polyracial family.

Mind you that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with #2. Heck, I find myself reading character profiles on top athletes just because they fascinate me, not because I believe it has anything to do with following a particular sport. Personality journalism is a time-honored tradition; we just need to keep it separate in our minds from actual, substantive coverage of the financial markets if we want to avoid being so overwhelmed by the personalities of the finance world that we fail to see the structural, strategic, and tactical realities at play there.