Read More of the Same Day's Blog

The 18-month bear market on Wall Street has seen prices fall so far that a daily move of 379 points on the Dow Jones Industrial Average is once more large enough to be newsworthy. This one-day change of almost 6% in the value of financial assets was especially noteworthy because of its unusual direction--on the buy side. ABC led with stock market action and it was the Story of the Day. CBS and NBC both chose to lead with a notorious decline in the value of financial assets, those purportedly held by Bernard Madoff's investment fund. In a pre-trial hearing in New York City, the disgraced financier's lawyer announced that his client intends to plead guilty this week to eleven counts arising from Madoff's self-styled Ponzi scheme.

"Remember what a rally looks like?" joked CBS' Anthony Mason as the stock market posted its biggest daily increase in three months. The day's action "was what the pros call a bear market bounce," ABC's Betsy Stark pointed out. She pointed to "beaten down financial stocks" as the origin of the buying spree: Citigroup up 38%, Bank of America up 28%, JP Morgan Chase up 23%.

An internal e-mail at Citigroup from Vikram Pandit, its chief executive, had announced that the bank was making profits during the first two months of 2009. CBS' Mason was skeptical: "Citigroup still has tens of billions of dollars of these bad loans--toxic assets--on their books," he warned. "They still have to show at the end of the quarter any possible writedowns from those bad loans." On NBC, CNBC anchor Erin Burnett pointed to reassurance for the financial center banks from Chairman Benjamin Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board. He declared that "he does not understand" anyone who "still takes the view seriously that we should let a big bank fail…He is not in favor of letting that happen."

ABC anchor Charles Gibson acknowledged reporter Stark's warning that the bear market is still with us yet became a cheerleader on the buy side, regardless. "We were so excited to be able to lead the broadcast with some good news," he gushed as he asked Liz Ann Sonders, the investment strategist at Charles Schwab, if there was a chance that the day's action might mark an end to all that selling. "It is good news that it was good news out of the financials that really started this," was Sonders' tentative ray of optimism.


Andrew Tyndall 3/13/09 3:47:49 pm

© 2010 Tyndall Report