The Grant Catton Blog

It has been suggested in some quarters (by Luke) that I've been remiss in my blogging duty by not covering the Kentucky Derby, which I attended this year. So as a long-time horse racing fan, I figured I should get on the horse and share some of my opinions on the Preakness, which was run yesterday.

Just in case you didn't see it, or hear about it, the lead-up to the race carried some interesting plotlines. You had the Kentucky Derby winner, Mine That Bird, being ridden by a different jockey, because that jockey, Calvin Borel, decided to ride the filly Rachel Alexandra. The Preakness would be RA's first run against male horses -- something which does or does not really matter, depending on who you ask. With wins in seven of her past nine races (the other two were 2nd place finishes) RA was undoubtedly the horse to beat in this race. In fact, the attention had shifted almost completely away from MTB onto RA.

Well, as you know, RA won the race. Breaking from the 13th post posi…

You know things are bad when headlines such as "U.S. Companies Reduce Payrolls by 491,000 in April" are considered positive. A few weeks ago, the news that "Ford Lost $1.4 billion in the First Quarter" was met with applause.

In both cases the numbers were considered good because they were "lower" than expected. So now, we're actually at the point where we're excited because companies are hemmoraging jobs and capital at slower rates than at the very worst point of this downturn -- assuming we've even actually hit that point.

Naturally, after months of bleakness, it makes sense to start looking for brightsides amidst all the negative news. Newscasters can't just say NOTHING, can they? And frankly, I don't know, we could be at the bottom of this mess and climbing our way out.

But, I think it's very telling about the state of the economy when the above headlines are considered positive news.