Ticketmaster announces a billion-dollar loss, blaming "declining ticket sales, costs associated with layoffs and a massive impairment charge." The loss is real (in a 2009-paper-losses, bank-accounting kind of way), of course. But:The bulk of Ticketmaster's loss was because of a $1.1 billion charge the company took because of a precipitous decline in its share price since being spun off from … [Read more...]
Archives for March 20, 2009
Of Poverty, Banking, and the Arts
Yesterday on CNBC, host Mark Haines said that Wall Street could not possibly be run well by people making $250,000. Here's the transcript:Let's get back to what I regard as a fundamental issue here. I know it's politically unpopular, politically incorrect. I know it goes against all of the populist indignation that's out there right now. But you can't really, it seems to me, expect that these Wall … [Read more...]
Help For The Arts (But 10,000 Arts Groups Could Go Out Of Business)
Americans for the Arts has warned arts organizations to plan scenarios for 40% cuts in their budgets as the economy gets worse. And the group says that 10,000 arts organizations could go out of business in this recession. Some have been saying for some time that the arts were overbuilt in the boom of the 90s when America built some $25 billion worth of new theaters, concert halls and museums (the … [Read more...]