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News reports are emerging that the search for a Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) CEO is coming to a close.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "Among candidates still under consideration is Carol Bartz, the former chief executive officer of Autodesk. a publicly traded company that builds design software used in engineering." But that is purely a guess.

The issue over who is chosen is not as important as what the person does in the first few months. Perhaps the primary goal would be to keep key executives from walking out the door. Because no one has articulated what the internet portal's long-term plans are there is little reason for people who can get other jobs to stay.

The first option for the company might be to sell its search business to Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Redmond may no longer be interested, and Yahoo! would be giving up its one strategic asset--that it is No. 2 in search behind Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). Without that, it is just another website.

The large oil companies may have been the last "safe haven" stocks. They have magnificent balance sheets; they have posted record earnings for several quarters; and they pay out relatively large and safe dividends.

The market has believed that "big oil" could remain profitable even with energy prices depressed. The money that the companies make on refining is outstanding, because the profits on selling gas, heating oil and petrochemicals are good.

Chevron (NYSE: CVX) burst that bubble by warning on profits. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Chevron said its earnings for the fourth quarter would be "significantly lower" than the previous period."

Over the last year, Chevron and most other large oil companies have done better than the market. During the last twelve months, Chevron's shares declined 20% compared to over 30% for the DJIA. And the firm has a 3.5% yield.

What happens to "big oil" now? For investors, the hope for a rebound in these stocks appears to be tied to whether the price of crude moves up sharply again. In an odd way, OPEC has become the ally of a number of U.S. shareholders.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallets.com.

A Congressional oversight committee has gone after the Treasury on how it used TARP funds. Doing so is like asking why the fire department picked a 4-inch hose to put out a fire rather than a 6-inch one. In a catastrophe, the need to save to save time trumps method.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "The U.S. Treasury has failed to reveal its strategy for stabilizing the financial system, not answered questions asked by a government watchdog, and has done nothing to help struggling homeowners, a report being released Friday charges."

What strategy would that be? Paulson & Co. were faced with a collapsing credit market and the chance that several major financial firms would fail. Under those circumstance, the whole US economic system could have melted down.

The original purpose of the TARP was to buy toxic assets from banks. The Treasury quickly decided that the process would take too long and would require complex calculations as to the value of troubled bonds which did not trade. Instead, Paulson elected to mainline capital into banks by taking equity positions in large financial firms. It would be hard to argue that this did not stabilize they system, at least temporarily.

The second major beef from the oversight committee is that Treasury did not do enough for mortgage owners. How would that have worked? Bailing out individual mortgages would have taken months, even if the process was done though the banking system. Which mortgages would quality? What would be the process for deciding whether help would be based on homeowner income or some other scale of need? How would hundreds of thousands of troubled home loans be identified.

The TARP was a fund for a series of emergencies. Looking back can always be done with 20/20 vision.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

Forbes laid off almost 20 people to save money. It is putting its online newsroom and print writers together. Yesterday, McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MGP), the publisher of BusinessWeek, cut several hundred people. US News, which used to have a strong business and personal finance section, is going from weekly to monthly to save money. There are rumors in the market that SmartMoney, a joint venture between Dow Jones and Hearst, is losing money.

The horrible thing about all of this and the layoffs at business sections of newspapers, is that the reporters who work the business and financial beats are writing their own obituaries. As they chronicle the demise of print media, the slowing of Internet advertising, and deepening recession, they have to go to work every day hoping that they will not find a pink slips on their desks.

What happens to these people?. They will not find jobs in the traditional media, but there is a model in the newspaper industry that may given them some hope. In many cities where dailies are struggling to survive and layoffs are plentiful, out-of-work writers are banding together to start websites to compete with the local press. Setting up these websites is cheap. The reporters already know their subjects as well as anyone else. They only need very modest ad revenue to do relatively well.

Business reporters may go the same route. Look for a lot of new, smaller financial websites to open staffed by laid off writers and watch them give the traditional press a run for its money

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7wallst.com.

Lenovo is, by most measures, the third largest PC company in the world. Several years ago, it took over IBM's(NYSE: IBM) personal computer business, giving it a foothold in the U.S.

Last night, Lenovo said its business is falling to pieces. Coming a day after a warning from Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), a grim picture of the industry is beginning to emerge. The most likely company to bear a heavy burden is Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), which is already facing challenges to its sales and global market share.

According to the FT, "Along with other computer makers, Lenovo is suffering from a plunge in demand for PCs. Lenovo, however, is particularly hard hit because of its reliance on the corporate segment, where companies are cutting IT spending aggressively." Dell also relies on the corporate market for a large piece of its sales.

Lenovo also said it would cut 11% of its staff.

Dell's shares are already down to $11 from a 52-week high of $26. If it reports awful earnings and guides down for 2009, that share price would easily drop below its 52-week floor of $8.72. By the way, if Dell had to cut 10% of its workers, over 8,000 people would be out of jobs.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

Now that the holidays are over, the big names in retail who had a tough fourth quarter are going to have to make big cuts. Based on early numbers, some of these retailers would include Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD) and Gap (NYSE: GPS). One operation that was hoping to have at least a modestly good season was Macy's (NYSE: M), but now It looks like that did not work out.

If Macy's has to close stores and restructure, it probably means that most operators who cater to the mid-priced range of buyers are in trouble. It looks like offering sharp discounts on inventory may not have been nearly enough to help them.

According to Reuters, "Macy's Inc is expected to announce as soon as Thursday it will close 10 locations." Since investors don't know which Macy's store will close and how large they are, it is impossible to know the exact impact the moves will have in terms of cost savings.

By some estimates, retail store closings will hit over 70,000 in the first half of the year.

The guys who did not make money in the fourth quarter will start shuttering before the end of this month.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

When looking at the retail landscape, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is the largest company in the industry, but there are a number of huge retailers selling everything from cloths to consumer electronics to appliances. So, Wal-Mart is big but there are hundreds of thousand of other stores around the country to give it competition

The size of Wal-Mart's influence, its tremendous influence, became evident again today. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Retailers are expected to report sales at stores open at least a year fell an average of 1.1% in December. The reports will likely confirm that the 2008 holiday season was the worst for retailers in decades. Excluding Wal-Mart Stores, the picture is even grimmer, with December sales falling an average of 6.3%."

Well, so what? So what is that with a weight of that magnitude, Wal-Mart could actually arrest the comeback of the retail industry and undermine its ability to raise prices which would almost certainly drive up store closings at other companies.

Wal-Mart almost certainly charges less than competitors for most of the inventory in its stores. And, since it sells almost every imaginable retail item, its reach across a number of segments of the industry is huge

The two critical elements for a retail industry recovery are store traffic and the ability to end the discount that are being offered to clear inventory and bring in customers. With is share of the total shopping population and "everyday low prices", Wal-Mart has the rest of the industry by the short hairs.

GM (NYSE: GM) is now walking around Washington making the case that the money the government may offer it will be all it needs, ever. That is highly unlikely, so the reason behind the assertion is a puzzle.

According to Bloomberg, "General Motors Corp. has enough government loans to cover the worst-case scenario it described last month and says it won't need more if the economy holds up." Under the current proposal GM would get $13 billion and GMAC has already gotten $6 billion.

The "if" part is the issue. GM's assumptions are way too optimistic.

Beginning on the cost side, if GM's employees, particularly UAW members, see a pot of money going into the car company, they are unlikely to take deep jobs cuts. The union has already said it has given enough. Creditors are almost certain to look at the infusion from the government as a reason to fight hard to keep their status and get full payment.

Looking at sales, GM still assumes a domestic vehicle market that will drive 12 million units sales a year. Based on December sales numbers, the run-rate for the entire US next year is closer to 10 million. GM may have to offer big incentives to keep its market share, which will push down margins even further.

Dream on.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

President-elect Obama is telling the public that the US may run a trillion dollar deficit to bailout the economy. According to The New York Times, he made the point that Americans face the unparalleled prospect of "trillion-dollar deficits for years to come," a stark assessment of the budgetary outlook that he said would force his administration to impose tighter fiscal discipline on the government.

After absorbing the shock of how large the number is, most people ask where the money will come from. Almost everyone already knows the answer. It will be passed on to taxpayers, probably in a few years when the economy recovers.

But, where the money comes from is the wrong question. The much more important issue is how it gets spent. The first proposal from the new administration is that about $700 billion gets invested in building infrastructure from roads to medical IT upgrades to broadband. This part of the plan is disturbing. The jobs it creates may take months. Getting complex programs for building out new schools and upgrading the energy grid means moving people to the geographic areas where the work needs to be done. It means creating agencies to oversee the work. That could take the better part of a year. The economy may be almost beyond repair at that point.

Ken Lewis followed the lead of many other bank CEOs. The head of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) will take no bonus for last year. BAC will also miss its financial forecasts for 2008.

There is still a very substantial question about how bank boards handled the credit crisis and the M&A deals some large firms did in the wake of the trouble. Bank of America bought Countrywide just as other large banks picked up rivals at bargain prices.

But, were they bargains? There is a good deal of analysis emerging that JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) may struggle to integrate Bear Stearns and other acquisitions. The balance sheets of the bank's targets may be worse than first realized.

Even if Countrywide was a relatively good deal, integrating it takes management time away from running the BAC core businesses which are likely to suffer heavy losses due to credit write-offs from consumer and business loans.

Lewis was the architect of the BAC M&A deals. He seems to be paying a relatively low price for the extent to which they have damaged the bank. The firm's board does not appear to care much about that.

The buck of bad decisions is being passed around at BAC and shareholders will probably end up with it.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

The article you are reading here was written on a netbook, a $350 machine. A lot of people thought netbooks would not have a market. They have small screens and less powerful processors than a laptop. Most of what a netbook can do can also be done on a smartphone like a BlackBerry.

But, this article is being written on a netbook. I have owned huge laptops for several years and a smaller one for the last year. When that died, I figured "why not take the risk? If it does not work out, how much money has been risked?

According to The Wall Street Journal, "A new breed of low-priced laptops called netbooks have been thriving during the downturn -- so well, in fact, that many high-tech companies are scrambling to adapt."

A netbook can run Linux or a scaled down version of Windows. Chip companies trying to sell high-end hardware like graphics semiconductors are out of luck. Whoever makes big laptop screens may not be around for long.

What's wrong with a netbook. The keypad is small. That takes a few days to get used to. The machine is a bit slow. For a heavy PC user that may cut productivity by five or ten minutes a day. But, it can operate with six or seven windows open and plays video just fine.

And, it weighs two pounds and can be carried around like a copy of a modest-sized biography.

Yesterday, business reporter Charlie Gasparino wrote in The Daily Beast that JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) and its CEO Jamie Dimon, would be the next big financial institution for fall apart. He wrote, "But Dimon is feeling that heat, nonetheless, from analysts, who believe his firm will post a loss this quarter, the first since he became CEO."

Well, maybe so, but throwing stones at the people who have done well in an industry that has not is easy, perhaps too easy. If JP Morgan does lose money, it will join a long line of other firms that have done so. If its loss is modest, it will still be better off than most if not all of its peers.

Banks may be the most heavily followed companies on Wall Street. Analysts and the press crawl over the PR and financial reports, looking for bad news. That means the market should be relatively efficient at putting values on them, especially after two years of humiliation in which they got those values wrong.

If the Street is right, JPM still has a brighter future than rivals Citigroup (NYSE: C) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). Over the last six months, JPM shares declined about 10%. BAC is down almost 40% and Citi is off almost 60%.

It may be a little early to write that JPM obit.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

This website is in the business and financial news business. So are a number of other online financial sites like SeekingAlpha, TheBigMoney, ClusterStock, and Minyanville. Just a few years ago, none of these operations existed.

Last year, advertising pages in tradition business magazine like BusinessWeek and Forbes were down by double digits. With the recession deepening and marketers pulling back, 2009 may not be any better.

On TV, there are now two business channels, CNBC and Fox, which is barely a year old and has horrible audience numbers. So far. But CNBC is owned by GE (NYSE:GE) and Fox is owned by News Corp (NYSE:NWS). That means both are likely to be around for a long time. They both compete against Bloomberg TV.

In the news service business, Bloomberg, Reuters, and the AP all have large financial reporting operations. In the newspaper business, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times compete for readers.

Lest you say that this post is just a bunch of names typed onto a page, consider that the economic downturn will not support all of these media. Advertising will disappear. Perhaps more frightening, as people pull money out of the stock market, the interest in investing will drop. As investment professionals are fired, they may drop out of the business news consumption population as well.

Who may not make it? The traditional business magazines publish on weekly or fortnightly cycles. That is too long a time between articles in a world where the web delivers information in real time. They may not get enough readers on the internet to offset sales lost in print.

One thing for certain. A number of the operations with their names in this piece won't be here in 2010.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 237wallst.com.

Two years ago, over 16 million light vehicles were sold in the U.S. Last year, the number was only 13 million. The sales rate for last month, based on the numbers reported yesterday, was below 10 million vehicles on an annualized basis.

So, what is the new normal for domestic car sales? It ain't 16 million.

With a deepening recession, what was once unimaginable is now imaginable. Car sales in the US may not recover for years. According to The New York Times, "The historic collapse of the new-car market dragged on in December, raising questions of whether the auto industry will ever again have sales levels that it took for granted just a few years ago."

A close look at those numbers is worthwhile particularly since the estimates that the Big Three gave Congress are based on an annual U.S. sales rate of over 12 million vehicles a year. The cuts in expense they are proposing are built around the assumption that they will be able to break-even at that level once their restructurings are behind them.

If a car or truck has an average price of $25,000, each million sales lost in a year takes $25 billion out of the market. If 2009 figures come in at 10 million, the market will be $50 billion short of Big Three estimates. In other words, their restructurings will not be nearly enough, and their need for federal money will be much, much greater than has been anticipated.

Put anther way, the present bailout plans don't even scratch the surface of the capital the industry needs.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Magazine publishers have believed that consumers and advertisers view them as very different from the daily newspaper. The paper is only read by the consumer for an hour, or maybe less. At the end of the day, it is gone. People will take an issue of Newsweek or Good Housekeeping around for days or even months. They may pick it up and read in several times.

Magazines have a longer "shelf life" than newspapers. That should make them more attractive to advertisers.

Some newspaper companies are actually going out of business. Others. like The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) are facing the need to sell assets. The industry has crumbled in just a couple of years as information consumption has moved to the internet.

Early advertising results from this year show that magazines may be the next newspapers and that by 2010 some of them and the companies which own them may be in very deep trouble.