HSBC bought all the ad pages in this week's issue of New York magazine, remarkably outbuying all those CBS and and ABC attempts to do the same in People and TV Guide, respectively. Hey, people are still talking about the time Target bought all the ads in The New Yorker a couple years ago!

Still, the HSBC (which, it bears mentioning, is not an American bank so you'd probably be safer there then your current 10-year plan of stuffing hundred dollar bills into a coffee cup under a floorboard) bought the most ad pages (24 total, including web splashes), and spent the most money on their campaign.

So at this point, is it even worth mentioning that the ad-monopoly is affecting how magazines do business, and not necessarily for the better?

Because hai, capitalism only works if you have more than one seller. And it's not like all that ABC money saved TV Guide from its .99 cent fate.

Sure. But in times when ad pages are at an all time low, and only the cooking magazines offering you ten different ways to use the same chicken bone are selling, maybe a little injection in foreign currency is just the medicine the capitalist doctor ordered.