I’ve been in San Francisco since Sunday and it has been interesting seeing how news breaks here versus back east.  For instance all the news about the Wall Street meltdown has had a kind of muted feel here, but I don’t think it’s because people here are any less worried or affected.  Rather, I think that because the financial market is already a couple of hours into its day when everyone here is starting to pay attention the east-based media has had time to calm down and get through its initial breathlessness.  Not that they seem any smarter or deeper from here, but that panic-tinged tone just isn’t as evident.

It’s also interesting to realize exactly how New York-centric our news still is, and from out here it’s really kind of annoying.  I have CNBC on right now (BTW, Dow is down 287 points at this point) and their "perspective" from the west coast came from a Hollywood reporter and focused on how advertisers will move to TV from print.  WTF?  I mean I’m sitting just down the road from Silicon Valley and I’m wondering why they wouldn’t look into the effect the market shake up is having on the tech sector.  Hollywood?

And the whole kerfluffle about McCain’s comment yesterday that the economic fundamentals are strong was kind of fun to watch from here.  While I was getting ready in my room yesterday morning I had the Today show on and they were playing McCain’s interview with Matt Lauer at just after 7:00 PDT.  Well, as I listened to his wan performance (it really was bad) and his incredibly lame explanation that what he meant was that America’s workers are the fundamental strength of the American economy, I realized that McCain had uttered those words three hours earlier during a live 7:00 a.m EDT interview and I started wondering what kind of spin his people had come up with in the ensuing three hours since he’d laid that stinker of an interview on his campaign.  It really hit home that out here news kind of hits with a time delay, and it’s much like us east coasters watching news out of Europe.  It just doesn’t seem so urgent or Chicken Little-ish, and I think that’s a good thing.

Maybe all this helps explain why everyone here seems so laid back.

Dana Blankenhorn calls Charles Schwab the new kings of Wall Street:

The value of Schwab stock is practically unchanged since the start of the year. (I don’t own any but I do keep my money there.) In the present environment this is an immense achievement.

Schwab himself finally retired recently at age 70, for the second time. Hopefully the new guy, Walter Bettinger, whose former retirement planning outfit was acquired by Schwab in 1995, has learned the lessons and will stick to his knitting.

The reason you won’t hear about this on CNBC is precisely why Schwab is so strong. As with Seinfeld, this is a story about nothing.

Schwab doesn’t play with its customers’ money. It offers a selection of mutual funds, mostly index funds, and invests customer cash conservatively. It offers advice, but that advice is simply to diversify. It doesn’t make extra money if you take its advice, and it doesn’t make more if you don’t.

I like to call Schwab my "bookie" and that’s a pretty good description of the business model. Schwab doesn’t have a horse in the race. Schwab gets its vig no matter who wins.