One of our regular readers emailed me this morning, asking about what was a fairly sparse early morning email (and corresponding short list of items in our RSS feed), asking me if there was some kind of slowdown in the news, and if that was related to the economy.

It’s always tough to tell real time, however, the last two weeks of August are historically slow news weeks. It’s the tail end of summer vacation, some folks are probably already looking towards labor day for their last summer hurrah, and most companies are looking towards the upcoming fall conference schedules for major releases and announcements.

Based on email bounces alone, a good chunk of our regular email readers are off at the beach, up in the mountains, or otherwise somewhere else except sitting at their desks. It’s always like this, as far as we’ve been sending out our newsletter.

On the other hand, slow news weeks also are the hallmark of a slow economy. During the dot com bust, the volume of news items in our newsletter went from something like 10-15 major news items on big days (go-go bubble days) to maybe 3-4 items, many fairly minor. It’s just a reflection of how much economic activity there is out there. Last year, there wasn’t nearly the normal summer slowdown you see in August; but then again, there wasn’t the long parade of bad mortgage and credit news, store closings and layoffs, and overall bad economic news you have been hearing lately. Today is quieter than a typical Monday, but the key will be news volume when everyone’s back in September.

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Economy by Benjamin Kuo