Stunned beyond words
I have not blogged in 24 days - each time I think I can latch on to a thought or comment it is over run by the news. We are truly in a second-by-second news cycle as each tick of the Dow Jones Industrial average spiraling perpetually downward brings a heightened sense of dread. It started on my birthday, September 29, as the House defeated the initial bailout package and the bottom fell out of the market - a stunning 777 point drop. I did not feel like celebrating that day.
Yesterday, when the market skyrocketed nearly 1,000 points I felt like celebrating. The world economies banded together and found a way to stave off catastrophe, at least for the moment. How many billions is it costing? I lose track, but I am sure that the cost will exceed the financial hit we took with the Iraq war.
Can we absorb all these humongous outlays? No, of course not. In order to fix our excesses and greed we must embrace excess and regulation. According to David Brooks, columnist for the The New York Times who is uncannily right most of the time, we are headed for real hard times. It is unavoidable no matter who wins the election. See today’s Brooks column Big Government Ahead.
What does the financial whirlwind mean to us poor PR shlubs? First comes the hiring freeze, already in effect in most large agencies. Then comes the layoffs. It has been impossible to break through to most financial/business media in the past three weeks. Clients start reviewing contracts, scrutinizing all marketing/PR outlays. It is tougher to make a living in PR today than it was three weeks ago and it will get tougher still.
The future is more uncertain because we are living in the NOW - the vagaries of the U.S. markets minute-to-minute, and the foreign markets preceding our market over night. I don’t know what to say. Thanks to Al Sutherland for long comment on 9/17 post “Is Financial Media Aiding Wall Street Collapse“. Al still has some words to offer.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop
It’s been a harrowing couple of days as, one after another, financial institutions sputter on the brink of evaporation. The bulk of my 20 year career has been in financial PR, often representing Wall Street banks such as Lehman Brothers. In good times the work is heady and intellectually stimulating. You get to work with some brilliant people who are masters of complex financial maneuvers. They are comfortable in their jobs, cocooned in their rich rewards, greasing the wheels of capitalism - until it all comes crashing down.
The financial media, by and large, disdain PR manipulations - they deal in facts and hard currency in legitmate story ideas and sources that can enlighten, analyze and inform. When a crisis hits, like now, Wall Street infiltrates main stream media and the politicians and commentators bellow about rampant greed and corruption that must be stopped.
The reality is that we will survive and occasional bloodletting keeps the system sound. The heap of toxic debt that is poisoning the system will be absorbed or regurgitated and Wall Street will invent new ways to securitize debt that will create mounds of wealth - until it doesn’t. It’s like the real estate market, feeding on natural boom and bust (all those unoccupied expensive condos in New York seem ghostly now).
This is the time when financial media takes center stage and the machinations behind the fortress of the New York Fed becomes the inner sanctum we all want to crack. This is the time when the New York Times DealBook, edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin (right), becomes the central source we go to at three in the morning when we can’t sleep because we want to know if the Asian markets are preceding turmoil in the U.S. and the other shoe is about to drop. Andrew (he seems so young - what else can you call him?) is not simply a columnist or a reporter, although he is both. He is essentially publishing a newspaper within a newspaper with blogs, breaking news, analysis, background, graphs, charts and myriad visuals. If it’s not all there, you can catch him regularly on Charlie Rose for more.
