Signs of the Times

This advertisement was in today's New York Times, and it reminds me of the school assignments in which we're asked to look at advertisements from old newspapers to see how they indicate their era. We find pictures of flappers from the 20's, we find war-related advertisements during the early 40's, and today we find this.

Yes, times are tough--for everyone, it seems.

I didn't keep the paper from the above picture, but a few months ago I was flipping through the business section over breakfast, when I saw what looked like one of those charts in cartoons when the desperate businessman is showing his company's (negative) progress on a presentation stand. Except it was real! Click on the picture for a closer look:
A few points of interest:

• The only "Market Gauge" that points up is the Euro.
• The only Year-to-Date growth in the S&P100 Stocks were: Campbell's Soup, Wal-Mart, and Amgen (a biotech)
• The left axis of the graph measures one-year price return--and it is entirely negative.