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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM OCTOBER 10, 2008
Friday turned out to be the mildest day of a weeklong selloff on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell a mere 128 points; compare that with 369, 508, 189 and 678 on the four previous days this week. Yet the cumulative effect of eight straight days of selling was enough to prompt all three newscasts to lead with the stock market as Story of the Day. NBC even decided to have Brian Williams travel downtown to Wall Street to anchor from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to dramatize the decline. ABC anchor Charles Gibson was a world away in Iowa where his Battleground Bus Tour through Campaign '08 swing states almost ended with ABC News' 29-ton omnibus stuck in the mud in an Iowa cornfield. CBS anchor Katie Couric was off and Early Show's Maggie Rodriguez substituted.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR OCTOBER 10, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
WALL STREET WEEK ENDS Friday turned out to be the mildest day of a weeklong selloff on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell a mere 128 points; compare that with 369, 508, 189 and 678 on the four previous days this week. Yet the cumulative effect of eight straight days of selling was enough to prompt all three newscasts to lead with the stock market as Story of the Day. NBC even decided to have Brian Williams travel downtown to Wall Street to anchor from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to dramatize the decline. ABC anchor Charles Gibson was a world away in Iowa where his Battleground Bus Tour through Campaign '08 swing states almost ended with ABC News' 29-ton omnibus stuck in the mud in an Iowa cornfield. CBS anchor Katie Couric was off and Early Show's Maggie Rodriguez substituted.
CBS' financial correspondent Anthony Mason was in a sarcastic mood to end the week. "The market cannot go down tomorrow, can it?" he declared. "It is closed." The indicator he used to illustrate how much cash had been pulled out of mutual funds by investors was sales of home safes: increased by 75%: "Yes! We shall check on sales of mattresses next week," he joked.
NBC anchor Williams surrounded himself at the NYSE with financial news colleagues from CNBC, his network's sibling cable channel. Carl Quintanilla explained that the selloff had been so extreme because "hedge fund and mutual fund clients want their money back" so fund managers were forced to raise cash "by selling stocks they might otherwise keep--McDonalds, IBM, ExxonMobil." CNBC's Maria Bartiromo reflected a mood where "everybody is looking for leadership; everyone is nervous." And CNBC economist Steve Liesman (at the tail of the Bartiromo videostream) pointed to the policy solutions that may emerge from the Treasury Department over the weekend.
Both CBS and ABC decided to go behind the scenes as Friday's wild stock trading proceeded. At one point the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen 683 points; at another it had bounced 955 points. ABC's Brianna Golodryga hung out with floor trader Jason Weisberg of Seaport Securities. "Let capitalism take over," he insisted, ignoring the television screen on which President George Bush tried to address the crisis. CBS' Michelle Miller was at Smith Barney, where she found retail brokers less interested in making money for their clients, more "old-fashioned hand holding." Investment strategist Liz Ann Sonders of the brokerage house Charles Schwab told ABC anchor Charles Gibson that the day's swings were "unprecedented," more volatile than on the day of the crash in 1987. She predicted that any rally in response would be "the mirror image"--"incredibly fierce and incredibly sharp."
CNBC's Quintanilla warned of long term effects from the financial crisis. The impact of the credit crunch on the macro economy might produce "a bleak decade" of stagnation, like the '30s or the '70s. Secondly, the babyboom generation, seeing their retirement accounts so badly devalued, might "leave the market for good, creating less demand for stocks and making them less lucrative investments for years to come." The result of a "harrowing and historic week," ABC's Betsy Stark told us, is a "loss of wealth that has been devastating." With $2.5tr subtracted from market capital in less than two weeks, stocks are worth no more now than they were ten years ago, in 1998.
WHAT WILL WASHINGTON DO? NBC was the only network to assign its White House correspondent to the policy response to the financial crisis. David Gregory repeated the rap on President George Bush--"the administration missed the warning signs of the financial unraveling and has been slow to take corrective steps"--before previewing the weekend's meetings in Washington between Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the six finance ministers representing the G7 group of other industrialized nations. Gregory ticked off their to-do list: inject capital in failing banks; free up trading in short-term commercial paper; shore up the real estate mortgage market.
CBS followed up with a trio of correspondents from world capitals. Richard Roth in London heard a broker recommend the "kitchen sink" strategy--"throw absolutely everything they have at the problem." Barry Petersen (at the tail of the Roth videostream) was in Tokyo, from where he observed "the meltdown was relentless" across Asia. Nancy Cordes was in Washington, where she advised us to disregard the selloff on Wall Street as "just a sideshow." The real crisis, she pointed out, was the breakdown in interbank lending. The British government decided two days ago to inject funds into its banks by buying a nationalized stake in London's major houses. Cordes called that "the nuclear option," before suggesting that similar nationalization might be pursued by the United States.
RECESSION HERE WE COME NBC's fourth CNBC correspondent was its automotive expert Phil LeBeau who filed from a Cadillac dealership, "one of the best in the midwest," in Naperville Ill. With credit tight and economic anxiety high, in the entire day just three cars were sold from that lot: "They consider that a good day in this environment." General Motors put out a statement to announce that it is not even considering bankruptcy. It had to, LeBeau shrugged "largely because going broke would scare away potential customers."
From London, ABC's Jim Sciutto (embargoed link) counted seven large European banks "fighting to survive on government bailouts" and saw "a whole nation on the brink." He was referring to Iceland, whose bank debts amount to twelve times the size of its entire economy. European corporations cutting back production in anticipation of a global recession include BMW autos, Christian Dior fashions and Nokia cellphones. "Even Asia, which had been the backbone of world growth, is bracing for a downturn."
ABC anchor Charles Gibson had planned his Battleground Bus Tour to focus on a close Presidential election campaign in four midwestern swing states. By the time he arrived in Iowa, that state's opinion polls were no longer close and its residents were counting their pennies not their votes. So Gibson turned to the macro economy. He talked to a smalltown stockbroker; drank coffee with four retirees; rode the harvest combine--"fascinating"--with a family farmer; and sympathized at a diner whose business is slowing. Not a single vote was mentioned.
"Every stop reinforced the fact that the economic crisis trumps everything," Gibson concluded about Campaign '08.
MCCAIN INSISTS ON STUMP DECENCY Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain appeared to moderate their personal attacks on their rivals on the stump. Obama turned to substance, unveiling a plan to boost small business. McCain did too, offering retirement savings relief for seventysomething investors. "Gone," stated NBC's Lee Cowan, were Obama's earlier charges that McCain is "erratic or risky." ABC's John Berman (at the tail of the Wright videostream) saw Obama performing a "delicate dance" on the stump, delivering one part "political punch," one part "economic pep rally." NBC's Kelly O'Donnell (at the tail of the Cowan videostream) observed McCain as he "gently admonished supporters" that Obama is "a decent person, a person that you do not have to be scared of as President." McCain may be moderating the nastiness in his tone because "it does not seem to be working," opined Bob Schieffer, host of CBS' Sunday morning show Face the Nation. He "did not have much of a week this week--a better week than the stock market probably but not a very good week." ABC's David Wright (embargoed link) did note, however, that on television, McCain's advertising remains negative, playing a tagline from a new spot: Obama's Blind Ambition. When Convenient He Worked With Terrorist Bill Ayers.
Speaking of negative campaigning, that was the topic of Jeff Greenfield's weekly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly CBS feature on campaign highs and lows. There are three ways a negative ad can backfire, he argued: distortions, untruths or going too far. His favorite "going too far" was from 1992 when then President George Bush attacked Arkansas for its subpar performance under Bill Clinton as governor. His ad made the state look like "something out of a Stephen King novel."
ACORN DRIVES KETEYIAN NUTS CBS News Investigates probed the voter registration efforts of ACORN, the grass roots community activist organization. Armen Keteyian recited a litany of outrageous irregularities in the forms its workers submitted to add names to the rolls. He mentioned fake identities and duplicate names and non-existent addresses and applications by prison inmates and by dead people and names copied from the telephone book. He protested that ACORN's workers may have cut corners since they were under pressure to meet quotas for pay. Yet for all those anecdotes, Keteyian told us that out of 1.3m new names, red flags have been raised on 10,000 in just a dozen states, which is only a 0.7% error rate. Keteyian quoted John McCain calling it voter fraud. Yet none of those 10,000 has voted--they represent mere applications to register to vote.
It seems that Keteyian is overreacting to GOP talking points here.
MESSY MALI ABC's conclusion of its Battleground Bus Tour in that muddy cornfield in Iowa meant that its skipped its usual weekending Person of the Week for anchor Charles Gibson's summary remarks. NBC and CBS both stuck with their feature format. On CBS' Assignment America, Steve Hartman brought us the little football team that could. McLeod West High School of Brownton Minn is likely to shut its doors at the end of the year so its student body is depleted. The Falcons' football team plays both ways, fielding a squad of just 19 players. NBC's Making a Difference saw Chris Jansing tell us about second-career babyboomers, volunteering for Third World development aid with the Peace Corps. She introduced us the fiftysomething Finesilvers of New Hampshire, husband Charlie and wife Jeannie, dispatched to help the destitute of Mali. He contracted malaria twice. She had to be airlifted home with a broken leg. "Profound!" Charlie exclaimed of his experience. "Messy and complicated…absolutely wonderful."
CBS' financial correspondent Anthony Mason was in a sarcastic mood to end the week. "The market cannot go down tomorrow, can it?" he declared. "It is closed." The indicator he used to illustrate how much cash had been pulled out of mutual funds by investors was sales of home safes: increased by 75%: "Yes! We shall check on sales of mattresses next week," he joked.
NBC anchor Williams surrounded himself at the NYSE with financial news colleagues from CNBC, his network's sibling cable channel. Carl Quintanilla explained that the selloff had been so extreme because "hedge fund and mutual fund clients want their money back" so fund managers were forced to raise cash "by selling stocks they might otherwise keep--McDonalds, IBM, ExxonMobil." CNBC's Maria Bartiromo reflected a mood where "everybody is looking for leadership; everyone is nervous." And CNBC economist Steve Liesman (at the tail of the Bartiromo videostream) pointed to the policy solutions that may emerge from the Treasury Department over the weekend.
Both CBS and ABC decided to go behind the scenes as Friday's wild stock trading proceeded. At one point the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen 683 points; at another it had bounced 955 points. ABC's Brianna Golodryga hung out with floor trader Jason Weisberg of Seaport Securities. "Let capitalism take over," he insisted, ignoring the television screen on which President George Bush tried to address the crisis. CBS' Michelle Miller was at Smith Barney, where she found retail brokers less interested in making money for their clients, more "old-fashioned hand holding." Investment strategist Liz Ann Sonders of the brokerage house Charles Schwab told ABC anchor Charles Gibson that the day's swings were "unprecedented," more volatile than on the day of the crash in 1987. She predicted that any rally in response would be "the mirror image"--"incredibly fierce and incredibly sharp."
CNBC's Quintanilla warned of long term effects from the financial crisis. The impact of the credit crunch on the macro economy might produce "a bleak decade" of stagnation, like the '30s or the '70s. Secondly, the babyboom generation, seeing their retirement accounts so badly devalued, might "leave the market for good, creating less demand for stocks and making them less lucrative investments for years to come." The result of a "harrowing and historic week," ABC's Betsy Stark told us, is a "loss of wealth that has been devastating." With $2.5tr subtracted from market capital in less than two weeks, stocks are worth no more now than they were ten years ago, in 1998.
WHAT WILL WASHINGTON DO? NBC was the only network to assign its White House correspondent to the policy response to the financial crisis. David Gregory repeated the rap on President George Bush--"the administration missed the warning signs of the financial unraveling and has been slow to take corrective steps"--before previewing the weekend's meetings in Washington between Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the six finance ministers representing the G7 group of other industrialized nations. Gregory ticked off their to-do list: inject capital in failing banks; free up trading in short-term commercial paper; shore up the real estate mortgage market.
CBS followed up with a trio of correspondents from world capitals. Richard Roth in London heard a broker recommend the "kitchen sink" strategy--"throw absolutely everything they have at the problem." Barry Petersen (at the tail of the Roth videostream) was in Tokyo, from where he observed "the meltdown was relentless" across Asia. Nancy Cordes was in Washington, where she advised us to disregard the selloff on Wall Street as "just a sideshow." The real crisis, she pointed out, was the breakdown in interbank lending. The British government decided two days ago to inject funds into its banks by buying a nationalized stake in London's major houses. Cordes called that "the nuclear option," before suggesting that similar nationalization might be pursued by the United States.
RECESSION HERE WE COME NBC's fourth CNBC correspondent was its automotive expert Phil LeBeau who filed from a Cadillac dealership, "one of the best in the midwest," in Naperville Ill. With credit tight and economic anxiety high, in the entire day just three cars were sold from that lot: "They consider that a good day in this environment." General Motors put out a statement to announce that it is not even considering bankruptcy. It had to, LeBeau shrugged "largely because going broke would scare away potential customers."
From London, ABC's Jim Sciutto (embargoed link) counted seven large European banks "fighting to survive on government bailouts" and saw "a whole nation on the brink." He was referring to Iceland, whose bank debts amount to twelve times the size of its entire economy. European corporations cutting back production in anticipation of a global recession include BMW autos, Christian Dior fashions and Nokia cellphones. "Even Asia, which had been the backbone of world growth, is bracing for a downturn."
ABC anchor Charles Gibson had planned his Battleground Bus Tour to focus on a close Presidential election campaign in four midwestern swing states. By the time he arrived in Iowa, that state's opinion polls were no longer close and its residents were counting their pennies not their votes. So Gibson turned to the macro economy. He talked to a smalltown stockbroker; drank coffee with four retirees; rode the harvest combine--"fascinating"--with a family farmer; and sympathized at a diner whose business is slowing. Not a single vote was mentioned.
"Every stop reinforced the fact that the economic crisis trumps everything," Gibson concluded about Campaign '08.
MCCAIN INSISTS ON STUMP DECENCY Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain appeared to moderate their personal attacks on their rivals on the stump. Obama turned to substance, unveiling a plan to boost small business. McCain did too, offering retirement savings relief for seventysomething investors. "Gone," stated NBC's Lee Cowan, were Obama's earlier charges that McCain is "erratic or risky." ABC's John Berman (at the tail of the Wright videostream) saw Obama performing a "delicate dance" on the stump, delivering one part "political punch," one part "economic pep rally." NBC's Kelly O'Donnell (at the tail of the Cowan videostream) observed McCain as he "gently admonished supporters" that Obama is "a decent person, a person that you do not have to be scared of as President." McCain may be moderating the nastiness in his tone because "it does not seem to be working," opined Bob Schieffer, host of CBS' Sunday morning show Face the Nation. He "did not have much of a week this week--a better week than the stock market probably but not a very good week." ABC's David Wright (embargoed link) did note, however, that on television, McCain's advertising remains negative, playing a tagline from a new spot: Obama's Blind Ambition. When Convenient He Worked With Terrorist Bill Ayers.
Speaking of negative campaigning, that was the topic of Jeff Greenfield's weekly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly CBS feature on campaign highs and lows. There are three ways a negative ad can backfire, he argued: distortions, untruths or going too far. His favorite "going too far" was from 1992 when then President George Bush attacked Arkansas for its subpar performance under Bill Clinton as governor. His ad made the state look like "something out of a Stephen King novel."
ACORN DRIVES KETEYIAN NUTS CBS News Investigates probed the voter registration efforts of ACORN, the grass roots community activist organization. Armen Keteyian recited a litany of outrageous irregularities in the forms its workers submitted to add names to the rolls. He mentioned fake identities and duplicate names and non-existent addresses and applications by prison inmates and by dead people and names copied from the telephone book. He protested that ACORN's workers may have cut corners since they were under pressure to meet quotas for pay. Yet for all those anecdotes, Keteyian told us that out of 1.3m new names, red flags have been raised on 10,000 in just a dozen states, which is only a 0.7% error rate. Keteyian quoted John McCain calling it voter fraud. Yet none of those 10,000 has voted--they represent mere applications to register to vote.
It seems that Keteyian is overreacting to GOP talking points here.
MESSY MALI ABC's conclusion of its Battleground Bus Tour in that muddy cornfield in Iowa meant that its skipped its usual weekending Person of the Week for anchor Charles Gibson's summary remarks. NBC and CBS both stuck with their feature format. On CBS' Assignment America, Steve Hartman brought us the little football team that could. McLeod West High School of Brownton Minn is likely to shut its doors at the end of the year so its student body is depleted. The Falcons' football team plays both ways, fielding a squad of just 19 players. NBC's Making a Difference saw Chris Jansing tell us about second-career babyboomers, volunteering for Third World development aid with the Peace Corps. She introduced us the fiftysomething Finesilvers of New Hampshire, husband Charlie and wife Jeannie, dispatched to help the destitute of Mali. He contracted malaria twice. She had to be airlifted home with a broken leg. "Profound!" Charlie exclaimed of his experience. "Messy and complicated…absolutely wonderful."
