SiliconBeat

Amid the global economic meltdown comes word this morning that things are going swell at Hewlett Packard. The company issued a press release saying:

HP today announced preliminary results for the fourth fiscal quarter 2008 with revenue of $33.6 billion, a year-over-year increase of 19% or 16% when adjusted for the effects of currency.

Hooray! The stock shot up 12 percent. According to the Associated Press story, the full numbers for the fiscal year 2008 (which ends in October for HP) came in above expectations. And HP maintained a relatively strong outlook for the first quarter of the 2009 fiscal year, which is the current quarter:

Wonderful, but…Take a deeper look, and there may be reason to re-cork that champagne.

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Being a columnist can be a lot of fun. Except when it’s not. And there’s something about Fridays that can be particularly grim, even at times like this when it seems every day feels a little more bleak. Maybe there’s just more economic data released today. Who knows? There’s just something about the end of the week when the universe seems to want to serve up an extra dollop of bad news.

To demonstrate my point, here is a sampling of the subject lines that greeted me when I just logged into my email:

• Challenger: TECH CUTS REACH HIGHEST LEVEL SINCE 2005
• Financial Market Strategies - November 14 - Economy: Not Pessimistic Enough!
• Consumer Sentiment Stays at Low Levels Last Seen During 1980 Recession
• Retail Sales Decline Sharply for Fourth Consecutive Month
• Telefonica’s sub growth slowdown could lead to price cuts; Pali Research Blog Posting
• Online Consumers Plan to Spend Less in Stores, Slightly More Online
• WSJ TECH ALERT: Sun Microsystems to Cut 18% of Work Force

And that’s just a few choice selections. It goes on.

It makes me long for a nice, heart warming piece of spam from a Nigerian prince.