Dow Jones Industrial average waste of time

I generally like to listen to NPR, and can be described as a news junkie.

But why, oh why, do they (and most other outlets) insist on wasting precious seconds of their broadcasts telling me how many points the Dow Jones Average has gone up or down----especially if it is just two points out of 12,000? And why would I want to know about this every hour?

Today's 3-or-4% loss is a good ocassion to make the obvious points: First, if you reallly think that I need to know how this number changes from day to day, please tell me the *percentage* that the thing won or lost; at least that saves me from having to do the math in my head, assuming that I actually knew the last day's closing price.

Second, only is news when the loss or gain is bigger than a certain percentage. What should the threshold be --- 0.5%, 1%? I don't know... but the implicit agreement should be that if the Dow is not mentioned in the hourly news, then it did not change that much. And then, maybe on Friday you can tell me how much it changed for the week.

Banana Republic Watch, February edition

And here's something that you only used to see in third-world "democracies" of dubious character:

The executive branch arbitrarily firing attorney generals who happen to be conducting sensitive corruption investigations, and replacing them by political operatives and hacks. All of this, made "legal" by an obscure provision slipped at the last minute into a "patriotic" bill.