The global stock market had more ups and downs this week than the career of Britney Spears. Don't look for the bottom to appear anytime soon following the worst week for global equities in six years.

A parade of superlatives continues to weigh on the mind of investors, most of them bad. Unemployment is at a five-year high. Payrolls shrank by 84,000 last month, according to the Labor Department. That's more than 75,000 economists predicted, the Associated Press said. Rising interest rates spurred the biggest increase in the foreclosure rate in almost three decades, according to Bloomberg News.

Sure oil prices are dropping to near $105 but they are still high. No car, truck or airplane was ever designed with the thought that oil would be anywhere near that high. Gasoline prices have also come down but they are still at levels that many Americans can not afford.

Legendary fund manager Mario Gabelli thinks that price for the Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) buyout is way too low, and he has some independent backing. According to The Wall Street Journal, ISS Governance Services, one of the leading proxy advisory firms to institutional investors, said in a report Friday that "the theoretical target price for Cablevision, by a number of analysts, is much higher than the current offer price."

Gabelli's funds own over 8% of Cablevision. While the company's shares trade below $35, Gabelli says they are worth $50.

The fight between the powerful fund manager and the Dolan family, which founded Cablevision and plans to take it private, is going to get messy and will probably end up in court. Gabelli probably has one of two goals in pushing the Dolans on the deal's price. The first would be to get them to increase their buyout offer. The other would be to bring a third party like Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) to the table to make a higher bid of its own.

The Dolans have tried to take the company private twice before. Each time the deal has floundered on price.

The founding family may have a card up its sleeve. The value of cable companies has fallen sharply in recent months on increased competition from satellite TV and broadband and video offerings from the big telecom companies. Shares in Comcast have fallen from $30 earlier this year to $24.

For the Dolans, an interesting defense of their bid goes like this: the value of cable companies is falling, so actually we are overpaying to take our company private.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

The bidding war between Michael Eisner's Torante and Upper Deck over Topps Company Inc (NASDAQ: TOPP) has come to an end (for the moment, anyway) but all is not peaceful in baseball-card-land. One of Topps' major shareholders, Mario Gabelli of Gamco Investors, Inc., announced yesterday his support for Torante's $9.75 per share, $385 million offer for the company, which the Topps board voted to accept before Upper Deck ramped up its offer.

Gabelli's support runs counter to the opposition of hedge funds Crescendo Partners and Pembridge Capital Management. Gabelli holds around a 7% share of the company, while Crescendo's is slightly smaller. But, unlike Gabelli, Pembridge and Crescendo hold board positions.

Three proxy firms have recommended nixing the deal, and Wedbush Morgan estimated in June that the appropriate value of the stock purchase should be in the $11.50- 12.00 range, points that are sure to impact today's shareholder vote on the Torante bid. I'm guessing we haven't heard the last of this controversy.