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Maybe this issue of business spending is helping to keep demand for some stocks flat today.

The good news in durable goods, after all, was all about transportation. As Peter Boockvar at Miller Tabak pointed out in an e-mail, "Non defense capital goods ex aircraft, the core capital spending component, fell .3% after healthy gains in the two prior months."

So, look's like we're stuck in the doldrums until businesses get more confident. Not only do banks have to lend, lend, lend, companies will have to spend, spend, spend to finally lift this recession.

Yep. But I dunno what to make of the market's behavior these days. I write a blog about Greenberg's alleged accounting nonsense at AIG and next thing you know the stock's way up because the new CEO is hobnobbing with the guy. Shows what I know.

That said, investors do seem to be grasping at any excuse to buy right now. So I don't know what to make of the reaction to the durable good report. Sometimes they seem to buy on the headlines, sometimes on the details.

But if investor confidence is going to serve as the be all and end all of policy making, I think we're in trouble. Look at the Reuters story we just put in the main module. The Fed, for all its professions of regard for transparency, is panicking over the court decision earlier this week that it must disclose the details of its negotiations with banks over their bailouts.

Disclosure will spark a bank run, the Fed says. Really? If the details are that disturbing, then maybe we should get our head out of the sand real quick. But that's not how Bernanke sees it. Maybe no Fed chairman would. Not even Volcker.

Yet in the end, I just don't think this is any way to run a railroad. Much less an entire economy. If the system is that fragile, then it needs a lot more shoring up than what we've seen so far.

Wait. I've got it. Hank Greenberg for Fed chairman!

There we go! Problem solved! Can he bring along his little white maltese, Snowball?

I agree that it's worrisome that the system is this fragile. But maybe it was ever thus. I'm reading (slowly) "Lords of Finance" and boy, did those people ever make mistakes.

Anyone else read that?

According to the news reports today, it looks like big, big cuts are paying off for Dell. But what will be interesting is what comes next? There's only so much that can be cut...

High yield companies may not need to save cash anymore since access to capital markets has been open lately. Has the environment changed that fast since we started debating the cash issue?

Not only have stressed high yield companies been able to raise debt amid a rally in the junk debt market, but they've also been able to raise equity, as Barclays notes in a report today.

"This development is a significant positive for the market as the use of the proceeds are being used to pay down debt and repair overleveraged balance sheets," it wrote.

"The equity sales are being accomplished on multiple fronts: seasoned LBOs seeking an exit through an IPO and public high yield issuers deleveraging by offering secondary dea and/or converts."

Especially with credit markets opening, it's important for companies not to sit on cash. If you can't spend it, give it to the shareholders. You're going to tell me that Apple is sitting on $30B and would NEVER put out a cash drop; but Microsoft had about that same amount a few years ago and decided to give shareholders a bonus of $10B. Leadership doesn't sit on the sidelines, and neither should cash.