Wall Street cheers when bad news isn't worse

Jittery Wall Street is living on a wing and a prayer these days. They take even bad news as a sign things aren't as dire as they seem. Yesterday the market went up almost 300 points on the strength of Citigroup's lackluster first quarter results. A loss of some us$5billion, a write off this time of us$16billion in subprime loans, and here's the good news a firing of 9000 a top of an already announced cut in staff of 20.000. Well the news was as bad as the Street expected, and so the market shot up like a small rocket reaching for the 13.000 territory. Which all goes to confirm the Rothchilds' adage that when red ink flows, it's time to make money.