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The Wall Street Journal issues a guide “intended to give additional guidance for appropriate professional conduct for news personnel of The Wall Street Journal, Newswires and MarketWatch. As with the Code of Conduct, these words are intended as a “reaffirmation of enduring values and practices” and serve to bring together in one place several sets of guidelines on various subjects. The most important wisdom about dealing with these questions is: When in doubt, ask.”

There is a section on:

“The use of social and business networking sites by reporters and editors of the Journal, Newswires and MarketWatch is becoming more commonplace. These ground rules should guide all news employees’ actions online, whether on Dow Jones sites or in social-networking, e-mail, personal blogs, or other sites outside Dow Jones.”

These guidelines seem perfectly reasonable and, indeed, they seem wise

Tip'o'the toque to Kirk Lapointe for this.

Avery Shenfeld, the chief economist at CIBC World Markets, issues that shop's monthly portfolio strategy today [PDF] and says it seems about the right time to make sure you've got at least some money back in the market:

We’re in the early stages of a bull run for stocks, but as any rodeo fan will tell you, bulls don’t offer a smooth ride. Markets suddenly jettisoned their fear of depression and looked ahead to an economic recovery. We too see the economy reviving before year end, but the rally looks a tad early and more vigorous than what we typically see when there’s only limited evidence of such a turning point.

That makes it imprudent to throw all of your chips on the table with a heavy overweight in equities. We could see a breather or partial pullback on soft economic news in the quarter ahead. But there’s enough medium-term upside to be benchmark weighted in stocks. Because ultimately, the market is right in anticipating earnings growth in 2010 and beyond, even if headwinds associated with earlier excesses in lending leave the first year of a global recovery running at a tepid pace.

This blog saw more than 115,000 unique visits in April. Thanks all for dropping by. And if there's something you're particularly interested in seeing, feel free to drop me a line. All my contact info is always at www.davidakin.com.

I should note that a post that's nearly 5 years old is in the top 10.

In the meantime, here's the most clicked-upon posts from April (feel free to use the handy-dandy search box for those without a hyperlink) with the time and date they originally appeared at David Akin's On The Hill:

1. So tell me again: Why did we spend $3.4-billion on these things? Fri 23 May 2008 10:08 AM EDT
2. Bisphenol A: We hardly knew you … Sun 27 Apr 2008 10:52 PM EDT
3. The Onion gets it right — eight years early Mon 19 Jan 2009 10:30 PM EST
4. Conservatives feuding in eastern Alberta? Mon 06 Apr 2009 10:26 PM EDT
5. New syntax for Twitter #ottawaspends Tue 07 Apr 2009 01:03 PM EDT
6. The only leader to stand up to Harper … Thu 29 Jan 2009 12:05 PM EST
7. Duelling perspectives on science funding Tue 07 Apr 2009 10:24 AM EDT
8. We're all Keynesians now – except in Alberta Wed 08 Apr 2009 04:52 PM EDT
9. Fun with iTunes or Bob Willis is NOT Lionel Richie Wed 10 Sep 2008 11:04 PM EDT
10. Wheat Board politics: Ritz vs Goodale Mon 09 Jun 2008 12:50 PM EDT
11. Who pays for this blog? Some disclaimers Fri 13 Aug 2004 08:09 AM EDT
12. Shea gets grilled on anti-Liberal press releases Sat 04 Apr 2009 01:07 PM EDT
13. Liberals publish roadmap to rebuild party Thu 16 Apr 2009 12:41 PM EDT
14. The size of the inaugural crowd: A journalist's dilemma Sun 18 Jan 2009 10:20 AM EST
15. Hey! I'm gonna be on Google! Thu 16 Apr 2009 04:03 PM EDT
16. When it comes to press relations, do you like Obama or Harper? Fri 20 Feb 2009 09:10 PM EST
17. BBC's Economics Editor gushes about Canada Wed 01 Apr 2009 12:04 PM EDT
18. Experts say: Wake up Canada – you're about to lose control of over Canada's waterways Mon 23 Feb 2009 07:43 PM EST
19. Harper holds conference call with reporters: (Mostly) U.S. Reporters Mon 20 Apr 2009 05:41 PM EDT
20. The numbers are out on third-party election advertising Fri 27 Feb 2009 04:27 PM EST

FYI — The Album Art Emporium has been updated with new vintage album art from Eurythmics, The Who, Modern English, Oliver Jones, The Doors, Elton John, Boomtown Rats, Flash and the Pan, XTC, Heaven 17, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Blasters, and The Proclaimers.

Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch just announced that Sheryl King will succeed David Wolf as the Toronto-based head of Canada Econimics and Investment Strategy. Wolf left Merrill last month to take a position as a senior advisor at the Bank of Canada.

King, a Canadian, had been working as senior U.S. economist at Merrill. Before that she was in economics department at TD Bank.

There is only one other woman heading up a Canadian economics shop. That would be BMO Capital's Sherry Cooper.

Auto analyst Dennis Desrosiers has spent “39 years and 7 months” studying the auto industry and his first reaction to the Chrysler news this afternoon is less than enthusiastic. Notably, he concludes that Chrysler/Fiat's success will depend on their ability to make a profit selling small cars to Americans. Two problems there: Americans have never bought small cars and no one, including the Japanese, have figured out how to make a profit on small cars. (The big profits for the Detroit 3 have always come from their pickups and SUVs)

Here's some excerpts from a note Desrosiers just published:

I listened to Obama and he was talking very tough. This is dangerous since the money at stake is very large and the bondholders are in a more powerful position now than before and they could really mess this up. Rarely do these proceed as planned and on any sort of schedule. We are entering a very dangerous time for Chrysler.

[Still] If everything goes as planned Chrysler could emerge a much leaner, smaller and more cost competitive company and be in a good position to pick up market share. This will depend on their product offerings on a go forward basis and this is one of their weak spots. New product offerings are very thin compared to their competitors … Quite frankly a lot of the import success has been due to the D-3's failure … quality, product cadence, ignoring key segments of the buying public, diverting scarce resources to stupid initiatives and away from their core business, iffy investments, ineffective restructurings over and over again etc.

…

Be careful to not read too much into the Fiat deal. The issue isn't whether the deal can be done or not. This is fait accompli. The real issue is whether it will work. To work there has to be three near miracles … first Americans have to embrace small cars .. they never have … second they have to buy Italian small cars … they never have and third Fiat/Chrysler has to find a way to make small cars profitable in North America when nobody including the Japanese have found a way to make small cars profitable in North America. So the Fiat deal is great but a lot has to happen for it to make a financial difference for Chrysler. And this is attempt number 4 for Chrysler … the dream team of Lutz/Stallkamp/Eaton didn't do the job … Daimler failed miserably with Chrysler … the wizz kids on Wall street ( Cerberus ) failed … there is no guarantee that who ever takes over can make this successful.

We are officially in “limp along mode” which I think is good. Chrysler can now restructure and with billions in taxpayer money limp along for 2 or 3 years in the hope that all this comes together and they can survive long term.

After 39 years and 7 months of studying this industry my intuition says it is going to be a challenge but at least there is an opportunity. Without this there would have been no hope.

Canada needs to sell stuff to the U.S. and Mexico in order to prosper so this is not good news, released a few minutes ago by the U.S. Department of Transportation: “Trade using surface transportation between the United States and its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners Canada and Mexico was 30.9 percent lower in February 2009 than in February 2008, dropping to $47.9 billion, the biggest year-to-year percentage decline on record.”

Canada-U.S. surface trade — mostly on trucks but some on ships and some via pipelines — was just over $33 billion in February, compared to $48.9 billion in the same month last year, a drop of 32.5 per cent. The value of total trade by pipeline (that would be oil and natural gas) was about $7 billion in February last year and that had just about halved in value this February to $3.7 billion.

U.S.A bound truck traffic was down 32 per cent; Canada-bound truck traffic was down 28 per cent.

Canadian imports from the U.S. — that would be mostly be consumers shopping on the Internet — was only down 11 per cent. How much did Canadians export by mail in February: Nada.

#pmharper update on 12seconds.tv

I am. (Go ahead and watch and then come back)

Not sure how 'rich' the experience or information on this service will be but I'm game to try it out. Thoughts? Suggestions? The video here is shot off the built-in iSight on my Apple MacBook and that's me sitting at my desk in the nation's capital.

The rules for 12seconds.tv are pretty basic: You get 12 seconds! Whether you use all 12 or not, it's a 12-second clip. That's mighty tight. When I was at CTV, I usually got 15-18 seconds for my stand-up at the end. CBC reporters are allowed to drone on a little longer, maybe up to 20 seconds. But 12 seconds? Man, that's tight!

I'm posting these 12seconds videos to Twitter. My Twitter app – TweetDeck — allows one to keep a separate window open for 12seconds.

For the first time since 1955, the so-called “headline” rate of inflation in the United States fell below zero. Prices in America last month were, on average, 0.4 per cent lower than they were in the same month last year and 0.1 per cent lower than they were in the previous month. Core inflation was up though experts believe core inflation is about to weaken as well.

Most economists will tell you that negative inflation or deflation is the worst thing that can happen to an economy. No one, so far as I can tell, though is sounding the alarm bells about this trend or that it will last long.

“We think this is the beginning of a short-term stint of negative rates,” writes Dawn Desjardins, deputy chief economist at the Royal Bank. “In the near-term, the growing economic slack will likely continue to pressure prices lower. However, we do not expect a period of sustained negative inflation rates but rather expect the headline rate to move back above zero later this year as the impact of the Obama Administration's fiscal stimulus package and extremely accommodative monetary policy support a return to positive growth and shore up inflation expectations.”

Millan Mulraine, an economic strategist at TD Bank, writes: “With the bargaining power of workers limited by deteriorating labour market conditions, and the pricing power of businesses continuing to be curtailed by the weakening domestic economy, we expect U.S. consumer prices to weaken even further in the coming months. Nevertheless, the weakness in consumer prices is unlikely to descend into a deflationary spiral as we expect prices to recover later this year.”

Geoffrey K. Pullum, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, leaves no doubt as to where he stands on Strunk and White:

The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students' grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it.

The authors won't be hurt by these critical remarks. They are long dead. William Strunk was a professor of English at Cornell about a hundred years ago, and E.B. White, later the much-admired author of Charlotte's Web, took English with him in 1919, purchasing as a required text the first edition, which Strunk had published privately. After Strunk's death, White published a New Yorker article reminiscing about him and was asked by Macmillan to revise and expand Elements for commercial publication. It took off like a rocket (in 1959) and has sold millions.

This was most unfortunate for the field of English grammar, because both authors were grammatical incompetents.