Slow News Days -- Or Perhaps Not...

I look through the news daily, mostly just to keep myself informed. I'm also looking for interesting items to blog on. As you can see, I haven't written a blog entry for almost a couple of weeks. I've been looking, but honestly, I just didn't see anything that caught my eye or sparked any big thoughts. Maybe it was me, or maybe things really slowed down.

Clearly, the economy is struggling a bit. I think that has made dealmakers more cautious. (No one likes to buy anything that's on the way down.) Personally, I think values will go down a bit more and some bargains will appear, and the deals will start again. That's the nature of economic cycles. In fact, the Fed should be careful not to prop up the economy too much with interest rate decreases (if indeed that strategy is still working). That will only stall price corrections in company values, and those price corrections will actually spur more deals than cheap money. (And cheap money doesn't help if lenders are too nervous to lend, and that seems to be somewhat the case right now.)

I think the other point that slowed me down on my blogging is a lack of any real big technology breakthroughs or announcements. After all, for the past several years it has been technology that has driven much of the revolutionary changes in the entertainment industry. However, when I thought about looking for major technology breakthroughs on a daily basis, it made me laugh. Have we really come to expect major developments and announcements every day? I know I have. I expect to open my email in the morning and see something amazing -- every morning. That's funny. It tells me just how fast things are really moving.

When our expectation is that something great will happen every day, that would indicate that a whole lot of great stuff has been happening for a long time. And that's true. Let's not forget that we live in the golden age of innovation. Economic cycles are no match for rampant creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. We are still surrounded by more innovation and creative energy than ever and I am confident that the string of amazing advances in both technology and business will continue for the foreseeable future.

Personally, I'm not that worried about a week or two where things slow down a bit. In fact, perhaps it's good to catch our breath once in a while, sit back and reflect. The calm moments between creative bursts are as important to the process as the big announcements.