'Postcard from The Street of $creams'

Monday, September 22, 2008

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Sky News Online: Nightmare on Wall Street, by James Silver.

Against a backdrop of the New York Stock Exchange and shell-shocked commuters scurrying home from a week of Wall Street turmoil, the TV news reporter fixes his hair as he prepares for his ‘live’ spot on the evening news.

“Guys, please!” he snaps at a group of teenagers who have wandered into shot behind him, pulling faces.

“Hey, this is America, man!” one of them yells back, as they shuffle off into the crowd.

Nearby a lone preacher in a sharp blue suit and polished brown shoes is warning of the end of the world, over the roar of the subway. His words are oddly appropriate given the events of the past few days.

Beneath two American flags, fluttering in the warm evening breeze, police officers in helmets and flak jackets - their fingers on machine-gun triggers - stand watch.

By now the man from “ABC 7 Eyewitness News, New York” is in full flow, ‘live’ on air. An audience of bemused tourists have gathered and many are filming him too.

“...I’ll get to that in a moment, Bill, but first the [Government] bail-out,” he tells the studio host, referring to the Bush administration’s announcement of a $700 billion bailout plan for the struggling financial sector.

He pauses. “These unprecedented Government actions are a response to nothing short of a financial crisis here on Wall Street...”

The reporter’s brow knits grimly, as he cues up his video-taped report.

The tone of the media coverage over the past few days in New York has been relentlessly bleak.

Words like “Depression” and “meltdown” seem to trip off tongues, while reporters have been using ever-more dramatic language.

A typical example came from CNN’s septuagenarian buzzard-faced anchor, Larry King.

“Tonight, breaking news,” he declared in his ‘intro’. “Wall Street takes another nose-dive. Investors panic. Should you?”

Later in that show, he interviewed Donald Trump, who pronounced: “I think this has the chance to be the worst period of time since 1929. This is a really devastating period.”

The rollercoaster week was also depicted in garish headlines in the New York press.

“Bailout Is A Bust! Brace Yourselves!” cried the New York Daily News, after news broke that the US government would be bailing out insurance giant AIG. “Dow drops 449 as plan to save AIG fails to ease fear, with more big banks at risk.”

Or as the New York Post succinctly put it: “More Grief On The Street of $creams!”

Twenty-four hours later, the coverage had see-sawed, with the same newspaper declaring: “Back From The Debt: Dow Soars 410”, while the more cerebral New York Times wrote of the embattled US Treasury Department: “Washington Takes on The Feel of Wartime.”

On the inside pages, the press began reporting that the turmoil on Wall Street was already being felt in the wider New York economy.

The Daily News warned that “Cabbies gear up for bad times”, as taxi and limousine firms feel the pinch.

One Brooklyn-based cab company, Corporate Transportation, had particular cause for alarm, as it had a contract with failed investment bank Lehman Brothers.

“We’re getting hammered,” its owner Eduard Slinin told the paper. “Lehman was one of our biggest clients. We would do 800 rides a night. We never believed it would collapse. It’s like a bad dream.”

Posted by James Silver - On Monday, September 22, 2008

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