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Harold Maass of The Week The Best of Today's Business
Posted on Tuesday, September 30, 2008, 12:00AM
NEWS AT A GLANCE
The remains of the bailout
Congressional and White House leaders returned to work on an economic rescue package, after the House's unexpected defeat of the measure sparked sharp sell-offs in U.S. and foreign markets. The House won't vote on a new measure until at least Thursday. (AP in Yahoo! Finance) News that the bailout could be revived helped Asian markets pare steep declines. Japan's Nikkei 225 closed down 4.1 percent, but Hong Kong's Hang Seng finished up 0.8 percent. (MarketWatch) Russia's Micex Index fell a record 6.7 percent, led by oil giant OAO Gazprom, after a two-hour trading suspension. (Bloomberg) While no financial rescue plan is in place, the stretched Federal Reserve and the FDIC will do their best to keep things afloat. (Los Angeles Times)
French-Belgian bank Dexia rescued
Dexia, a lender based in Brussels and Paris, got a $9.2 billion capital injection from federal and regional governments, in the latest public-sector intervention in Europe's banking sector. "Things have accelerated brutally," said analyst Christophe Ricetti at Natixis in Paris. Trading in Dexia shares was suspended after a 30 percent drop yesterday. (Bloomberg) Ireland, meanwhile, said it will insure all deposits at its six locally registered banks, to prevent a bank run after a record 12.7 percent sell-off Monday on the Irish Stock Exchange. (The New York Times) In the U.S., bankrupt Lehman Brothers sold off its profitable Neuberger Berman asset management business for $2.15 billion to buyout firms Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman. (Reuters)
New food-origin rules kick in; Spam sits out
New rules kick in today that require more imported foods to list their country of origin. Meat, fresh fruits and vegetables, and certain nuts will now have to say where they came from. Passed six years ago, the law takes effect amid a Chinese milk scandal and not long after the Mexican salmonella-tainted pepper problem. There are exceptions to the rule, such as for processed foods, mixed vegetables, and meat sold in butcher shops. (AP in Los Angeles Times) Spam also gets a pass. U.S. producers hope the rule, which will cost companies $2.5 billion to implement in the first year, will convince consumers to buy American. It may, or it may not. "I prefer meat from other countries, like Argentina," says Chicago resident Stacy Corbett, 36. "It's usually more tender." (Bloomberg)
Cheap fares, farewell flights
There's a downside to cheap flights: when airlines cut routes, as many of them are these days, the low-fare destinations and starting points are the first on the chopping block. For example, Oakland International Airport -- which saw a decade-long surge in traffic on the back of discount airlines -- will have 28 percent fewer flights this November than it did a year earlier, and American and Continental are pulling out of the airport entirely. Between fewer flights and higher fares, "we are seeing the reverse of what people call the Southwest Effect," said Steve Grossman, aviation director for the Port of Oakland. (The Wall Street Journal)
BEST COLUMNS OF THE DAY
It will be bad
The "basic problem" behind the failure to pass the $700 billion economic rescue plan, says Steven Pearlstein in The Washington Post, is that too many people "fail to understand that they are facing the real prospect of a decade of little or no economic growth because of the bursting of a credit bubble that they helped create and that now threatens to bring down the global financial system." Politicians, financiers, voters, and foreign leaders are all in denial. They, we, will understand soon enough, when we find ourselves in "a world with less debt and more inflation." Like it or not, "extraordinary government interventions" -- effectively nationalizing much of the financial system, fixing it, and returning it to private hands -- beats the alternatives.
This too shall pass
"Wall Street is dead," says Jason Zweig in The Wall Street Journal, and "whether it was murder or suicide is beside the point." The financial dominoes toppling over are diverse -- large and small stocks, both foreign and domestic; real estate investment trusts; even gold and money-market funds have teetered -- but perhaps the most "psychologically damaging collapse" is the "very notion of diversification itself." There doesn't seem to be anywhere safe to park your money: 91 percent of all mutual funds have lost money this year. Is there good news? Yes. This won't be another Great Depression. Diversification will start working again soon. And while "Wall Street is dead, innovation is not." Bailout or no, "don't bail out."
GOOD DAY FOR: Sun sets, after The New York Sun is printing its final edition today. The Sun, a conservative-leaning newspaper started in 2002, couldn't find financial backers. "This month, not to mention this week, has been one of the worst in a century in which to be trying to raise capital," said editor Seth Lipsky. (The New York Times) It did not ask for a federal bailout. (The New York Sun)
BAD DAY FOR: The innocence of childhood, after Jack Anderson, then 2 and on his way to Disney World with his family, was prevented from boarding an airplane for an hour because his name appeared on theTSA's terrorist watch list. Anderson was again pulled aside as a potential terrorist two years later, when he was 4. The Anderson family now drives to all their vacation destinations. (The New York Times)
NOTED: This is the last posting of The Best of Today's Business. Thank you for reading, and good luck.
Peter Weber and Harold Maass of TheWeek.com.
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