Signs of the Times...

In case you missed the news last week, Ward's broke the story that AutoTrader.com had been for sale but was taken off the market. You can read the story here.

The problem isn't with AutoTrader, it's with Cox Enterprises, which has a lot of debt it needs to pay down. An AutoTrader sale makes a lot of sense. Cox likely will get a lot of money for it once this credit crisis gets fixed.

In other news, sources tell me that for the first time in its 84 year history, Kelley Blue Book laid off 22 employees and shut down nine open positions a few days ago.

J.D. Power and Associates also laid off approximately 50 employees last week, most of them from the automotive side of the business.

The sad reality is, because of Wall Street's stupidity and greed, many of our companies have been, and will continue to exercise job cuts.