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This was a landmark day for financial journalism. It marked the entry by a soon-to-be-sibling of the Dow Jones brand onto cable television. Fox Business Network was launched, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which will soon complete its purchase of Dow Jones. It will compete with 17-year financial news leader CNBC, a network with tiny viewership but huge profits, according to CBS' Kelly Wallace. "Fox declared its approach more Main Street than Wall Street."
At the same time a pair of CNBC reporters appeared on NBC. From the New York Stock Exchange, Maria Bartiromo warned anchor Brian Williams that rising crude oil prices--"up more than 40% in 2007 alone"--would be "no mistake…a negative for the US economy." Bartiromo's colleague Scott Cohn updated us on the push to replace imported oil with ethanol generated from domestically grown corn. The corn harvest, which has swelled to 13bn bushels, up 70% in two years, is now producing too much: "Without enough alternative fuel vehicles to soak it all up, the price of ethanol is falling" and newly-built plants are shutting down. Nevertheless the high global price of crude is keeping regular gasoline prices high. ABC's Chris Bury (subscription required) reminded us that last year the cost of a gallon of gas dropped 47c after Labor Day; this year just 3c. He isolated three factors pushing the price of a barrel of crude above $86: global demand, a weak dollar--and the threat to an Iraqi pipeline as tensions between Turks and Kurds escalate. Inflation-adjusted, crude is still cheaper than it was during the Iranian Revolution, yet "the big question now is not whether the record will be shattered--but when."
The other financial landmark was a looming birthday celebrated by socialsecurity.gov. The nation's oldest babyboomer, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, turns 62 on January 1st, 2008, so she signed up for Social Security retirement benefits, the first of her cohort of 77m. She is "the raindrop that is about to become a tsunami," as ABC's David Wright (no link) put it. Both Wright and CBS' Chip Reid previewed the eventual depletion of the trust fund. Neither even mentioned the plan President George Bush ballyhooed in 2005 to prevent depletion by privatization. "There are basically two choices for fixing the problem: you either increase taxes or you cut benefits," Reid asserted. "Of course it is perfectly obvious how to fix it," was how Wright put it, "either raise taxes or cut benefits."
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