Category: Daily Biz

We’re not in this business for the awards, but we still enjoy winning them. And, on April 19th, the Nightly Business Report team enjoyed winning three “Remi” awards at the 2008 WorldFest/Houston International Film Festival. This win marked the 8th year in a row NBR left WorldFest with several Remi awards.

If you’re wondering which specific NBR programs and segments were honored, here’s the list:

• The new edition of NBR’s classic home video How Wall Street Works won a Special Jury Award. That’s the second-highest award in the Festival and the top award in its category, Education/Instruction -- Adult.
• The series “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Earnings” won a Gold Remi Award in the category Analysis/Background of a Single Current News Story. Congratulations to correspondent Suzanne Pratt and her support team in the NBR New York bureau, who worked hard to put this series together.
• NBR’s special Coverage of the 2007 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting won a Silver Remi Award in the Single Breaking News Story category. Congratulations to anchor Susie Gharib and photojournalist Mike Malanga for bringing us inside this event – the rock concert of annual meetings.

Wall Street is keeping up last week's momentum.. up more than 200 points today. That's due in part to a new agreement that will give Bear Stearns shareholders five times the payout than was outlined in a JPMorgan Chase buyout deal a week ago. So far today, Bear Stearns shares have nearly doubled in value. New York Bureau Chief Scott Gurvey will have analysis on today's announcement.

A stronger-than-expected housing report is adding to the upswing. The National Association of Realtors reported sales of previously-owned homes rose in February after falling six months in a row. At the same time, the trade group says median home prices fell by the largest amount on record. Tonight, Susie Gharib interviews Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. strategist at Citigroup about what's going on in the commodities markets. Stephanie Dhue looks at parallels between the current credit crisis and and the Savings & Loan Crisis of the 1980's and early 90's. And, in tonight's Tax Tips, advice for homeowners facing foreclosure from Kevin McCormally, Executive Editor at Kiplinger's Personal Finance.

Outside of the financials... stocks were surprisingly strong today. Last night as news was unfolding about JPMorgan's purchase of Bear Stearns at $2.00 a share and the Federal Reserve's emergency cut in the discount rate... I found myself thinking... you better get to bed early, 'cause it's going to be a long day on Wall Street. I wasn't far off, but I was certainly surprised to see the damage contained to the financials, especially when everything I'm reading calls the current credit environment "unprecedented."

We'll have three takes on the story tonight... first, Suzanne Pratt with what the deal means for JPMorgan and Bear. Second, Erika Miller looks at who could be the proverbial next shoe to drop among the financials. Third, Darren Gersh looks at the Fed's role and the tools it has left in its box to help solve the credit crisis.

And, NBR's Susie Gharib will also talk one on one with banking analyst Dick Bove of Punk, Zeigel & Co. He has been perhaps the most vocal of the analysts covering the banking and brokerage sector, and tonight his take on this crisis is no less alarming.

It's a very exciting day in the NBR newsroom with lots of preparations underway to bring you Susie Gharib's interview with President George W. Bush. The President addressed the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce today, and urged Congress to take up work on a free trade agreement with Columbia as soon as lawmakers return from their Easter recess. After that speech, the President sat down with Susie at the White House. Their conversation covered a variety of topics including international trade, the dollar, the U.S. economy and soaring oil prices.

In other news...

What a day on Wall Street with many focusing not on the lousy stock market, but instead on the unfolding prostitution scandal involving New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer made his name serving as New York's Attorney General. In that role he was an anti-corruption crusader bent on forcing Wall Street to clean up its act. He played a key role in the ouster of Dick Grasso from the New York Stock Exchange. Today, he made no reference to the prostitution scandal, saying only it was a private matter and that he'd failed to live up to his own standards. The Governor gave no sign he had any intention of stepping down. The New York Times quotes a federal law enforcement official as saying Spitzer is "client number nine" captured on federal wiretap tapes arranging a meeting with a high priced call girl on a visit to Washington, D.C. last month.

In other news...

The second straight month of job losses all but ended the debate over whether the U.S. economy has slipped into recession. The Labor Department says nonfarm payrolls tumbled 63,000 in last month, after falling 22,000 in January, which was the first decline in more than four years. Tonight, Suzanne Pratt takes a look at what today's data means for the economy and new hopes of another rate cut by the Federal Reserve.

Wall Street stocks fell, came back, and fell again on the news. The Fed is moving to assist credit markets. Today the central bank said it would boost the size of its term auction facility or TAF to $100 billion. And how much is too much? Lawmakers on Capitol Hill say top banking industry executives were paid far too much in salary, retirement, and bonuses while their companies' fortunes declined. Countrywide Financial's Angelo Mozilo, Stan O'Neal formerly of Merrill Lynch, and Charles Prince formerly of Citigroup are defending their millions in compensation and the contributions they made to their respective companies.

Plus, tonight's Market Monitor say gold is the best hedge in this growing global credit crisis. He's Mark Skousen, author of Investing in One Lesson.

How do you pick the best quotes from 14-1/2 minutes of good stuff? That's the task I faced today, after Susie Gharib interviewed Richard Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Susie and Fisher covered a lot of ground from inflation to stagflation to how much is enough when it comes to rate cuts? In the end we decided to accommodate as much of the interview as possible by pushing off some of our regular features, like the commentary that usually ends the program.

That said we were still only able to bring you about 7-1/2 minutes of the Fisher interview. So if you like what you see tonight, please check out the streaming video of the full interview on our website. You can also read the complete transcript here.

Changing their religion... that's how NBR's tech expert Scott Gurvey describes Microsoft's plan to incresase the openness of its products. The move allows third party developers to create new applications that work with Microsoft's products. Scott's story leads tonight's program.

We're also talking tax rebates with our tax guru Kevin McCormally. He's the Editorial Director at Kiplinger's Personal Finance. We've received lots of email asking for the "truth" about the rebate checks, with some viewers insisting that they're just an advance on next year's tax refunds. Join us as Kevin takes on the role of myth buster. We also begin Lucy Craft's two-part series "Taiwan Tech" with a look at Asustek a Taiwan-based maker of high-tech low-cost laptops.

If you are a faithful viewer of the program (and we hope you are) you've probably noticed Paul's Stocks in the News segment has not had his usual lineup of stock charts in the last few weeks. He mentioned on the air that we're having some computer glitches. But.. the problems have gone on far longer than we anticipated, so it's time for an explanation. I thought this blog would be the best place for everyone to see it.

We use two different services to produce on-air stock charts.. a data provider and a software provider. Several weeks ago, our data provider underwent a HUGE change in how it handle its information, and had to change the ticker symbols for more than 27,000 (yes, that's thousand) stocks and indices. When the new symbols were plugged into the charting software, the two systems refused to work properly together. They're still not working properly together, and so we've been working with both vendors virtually non-stop to get things back to normal.

Lots of odds and ends in the news today, as we wrap up a rocky week on Wall Street. Just hours after losing its triple A credit rating from Moody's, bond insurer Financial Guaranty Insurance or FGIC asked the New York State Insurance Department for permission to split into two companies - one to insure safer muni bonds and another to handle riskier structured finance bonds. I spoke with bond strategist Marilyn Cohen of Envision Capital about the FGIC situation earlier today. She thinks fellow bond insurers Ambac and MBIA will likely cave to public pressure to split their businesses as well.

In other news, another sign of recessionary pressures on the economy as the latest University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index showed a sharp plunge. Susie Gharib asks the head of the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment, Caterpillar Chairman and CEO Jim Owens about his economic outlook. The good news is, he sees a soft landing for the U.S. economy later this year. We also bring you Paul Kangas' Market Monitor interview with Jim Stack, the head of Investech Research.

Last night's commentator urged employers not to overlook their 30-and-40 something year old employees as they struggle to attract young employees and hold on to older more experienced workers. I thought I'd devote part of today's blog entry to another workplace issue: Celebrating birthdays in the workplace.