Market Cap for June 14, 2005

Over the coming weeks, I may try out new "regular" segments to appear on The Delta Institute. A week or so ago, I debuted the Fifteen Minuters of Fame, a quick list of various entertainment items. The stories are summarized in a sentance or two, with a link given in the text to go to the full story.

Same rules apply for the Market Cap, except this time, it's about business! Oh, but I pick the interesting business stories. Here is today's Market Cap:
- Reports have it that the Washington Post Online has bought a contract with Yahoo!, replacing a former partnership with Google. Yahoo! will provide a search engine and ads for the newspaper's website. In other Yahoo! news, the megasite is considering it's own browser.
- Video Game voice actors who are affiliated with the Screen Actors Guild will get a 36% increase in the minumum wage for the next 2 1/2 years after intense negotiations with companies.
- America is Dutch! People saving their pennies caused wholesale prices to dip 0.6% in May, the biggest month-to-month decline in more than 2 years. For perspective, there were gains of 0.6% in April, and 0.7 in March. Retail sales fell by 0.5%, the first decline in 9 months.
- But not ALL retail fell. Best Buy reported an 85% jump in quarterly profit. In semi-related news, Circuit City hopes someday to have customers.
- Peir 1 is also wondering why foot traffic has been light. The company is warning that quarterly profits will fall short of expectations. This is the 10th time in a row that they've given such a warning.
- Warner Music Group announced that they are narrowing their losses.
- Looking down on the poor masses, the self-proclaims diety's, er, company executives at OPEC announced that they will attempt to lower oil prices by increasing production.

And that's today's Market Cap.