Doomsday Scenario: Craig's List is another nail in the news coffin

Ah, yes. Tuesday, baseball season, and new NCAA champs. Sigh. Online classified ad growth skyrocketed by 84% in February, according to Hitwise (tip to MarketingCharts.com). The bad news? Craig's List and other free classified sites dominated the growth, further sealing the doom of newspapers. Steve Ruble of Micropersuasion interviewed Jeff Jarvis of "What Would Google Do?" fame (and Buzzsaw, of course) and asked what the future of online advertising was. The reply? Bleak to non-existent.

Zero Hedge points out that consumer credit is dropping so fast that old assumptions about consumption are way out of whack. Too bad over 70% of the U.S. economy depends on consumption. A couple of prominent economists at VoxEU voice the verboten view that, actually, the economy is headed down FASTER than it was during the Great Depression and the subsequent economic situation could well be worse. Scary! And that's it for the day. Enjoy.

Alex Salkever is the Director of Research at Piqqem.com, a stock prediction community powered by user sentiments and the Wisdom of Crowds.

Tags: consumer spending, ConsumerSpending, consumption, credit crunch, credit markets, CreditCrunch, CreditMarkets, depression, great depression, GreatDepression, newspapers, nyt, nytimes