It will be very negative. Given the easy money out there, if these kind of prime assets can't get taken, it will rattle a lot of investors and depress sentiment.

Both of these names remain less exposed to some of the adverse trends within the industry.

Industry numbers have been somewhat disappointing. It's going to be a very tough year again.

The bottom line on Knight Ridder papers is that in order to make these deals work, someone has to get extremely aggressive with costs. There's no question that this means that any buyer has to go in with a very, very sharp knife and trim the fat and maybe into the muscles to get this to work.

These unfunded liabilities are not a big problem. We have 40 or 50 years to recoup the money through investments. A person who owes $400,000 on a mortgage wouldn't say, 'Oh, my God, we're doomed,' because they know they have 30 years to pay it off.

Money doesn't make Dr. Rudolph tick. What makes Dr. Rudolph tick, what drives him, is unfairness in the health care system.