S&P Downgrade Takes Center Stage
Tonight the S&P downgrade on the US debt took center stage on cable news with the nets going wall to wall on it. As of 10pm CNN, MSNBC, FNC, and FBN are still live covering it. Bloomberg was covering it live until 10pm. CNBC appears to have been caught flat footed according to what I’ve been seeing on Twitter. Post your reaction to the coverage here…
Update: Time to take CNBC to the woodshed again. A week after not being live to cover what was going on with the foreign markets on Sunday, while everyone else in cable news except HLN were, opting instead to send out a press release saying that we can watch CNBC Asia on CNBC.com, the network again stubs its toe in a huge way. FBN is hustling as I type this. Bloomberg was covering the story at 9pm. CNBC? Nada. After this week CNBC should change its slogan from “First in business worldwide” to “First in business when we feel like it” Yes, CNBC your behavior has been that bad.
August 5, 2011 at 8:00 pm
I’m trying hard to counter the argument that CNBC has fallen down on the job. I thought I had a reasonably plausible argument for last Sunday. Alas, I’m out of bullets.
“The downgrade puts the US debt rating on par with Belgium, but below countries like the United Kingdom and Australia” – CNNMoney
August 5, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Was MSNBC “live” or did they just re-run Rachel’s 9PM show? Granted, it’s a step up from prison-palooza, but still…
August 5, 2011 at 8:25 pm
They ran the same Rachel hour twice. FNC is doing the same with Greta.
August 5, 2011 at 8:31 pm
For East-coast audiences, re-running those hours starting at 11:00PM makes sense, but that’s kind of crappy for the Left-coasties.
CNN should move its operation west. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one news channel based in the Pacific time zone?
August 5, 2011 at 8:44 pm
Situation normal here in the West. When news breaks in primetime we get reruns, or Ainsley looking terrified that the telepromptor isn’t on.
August 5, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Does this mean that FBN beats CNBC? Guess we’ll be hearing from PR-boy..
August 5, 2011 at 8:50 pm
TEA Party 2, American people 0.
August 5, 2011 at 8:51 pm
Missy is going to be bloody ticked-off since FNC isn’t following their listed programming times. She’ll probably send off a pithy email with a few colourful metaphors included. “Name & town, name & town”, Miss Missy.
August 5, 2011 at 8:55 pm
If Fox News Watch gets preempted, we can all be happy.
August 5, 2011 at 8:57 pm
If not for the Tea Party, all of the credit rating companies likely would have downgraded. The president’s budget proposal, defeated in the Senate 97-0, called for a whole lot more deficit spending.
Socialistic economics #fail
August 5, 2011 at 9:08 pm
Sean Hannity interviews Mark Sanford? Why?
August 5, 2011 at 9:13 pm
Nostalgia?
August 5, 2011 at 9:25 pm
Man, this is excruciating. “Sean. He’s in love with the chick in Argentina. Clearly, obviously, head over heels nutso. Get over it.”
August 5, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Joe watching Mark Sanford interview on Hannity & Hannity. Why?
Saw three minutes of it. Could. Not. Stomach.
August 5, 2011 at 9:39 pm
The dreaded “didn’t bother to change the channel while working” disease. You’d be amazed how much crap Fox programming I see that way after MSNBC dumps out for the weekend. Is Judge Jeanine on yet..?
August 5, 2011 at 9:43 pm
Sounds to me as though there’s enough blame to go around, if one is not just out for political advantage.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/08/05/breaking-sp-downgrades-u-s-to-aa/
August 5, 2011 at 9:47 pm
The showdown over the debt ceiling was unnecessary, and entirely a product of the GOP.
August 5, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Like I said.
August 5, 2011 at 9:56 pm
You can’t have a fit over something nobody has a fit over – lying to the public in the process – then pretend “both sides” are the problem. Your side launched this attack, now you’re stuck with the wreck it’s causing.
August 5, 2011 at 9:58 pm
And you can keep blaming everyone in the world but your President, when there’s no way in hell that he would have ‘cut’ even that pitiful amount of spending without having something in a vise.
August 5, 2011 at 10:01 pm
-entirely a product of the GOP-
How many GOP votes did the Democratic Party-controlled government get in favour of trillions in deficit spending for the lousy health care and stimulus bills?
Readily accessible information. Compare spending under Bush/GOP with spending under Obama/Dems. The latter makes Bush look like a miser.
August 5, 2011 at 10:09 pm
You really don’t understand the word “depression” do you? I agree the healthcare thing was a boondoggle, but the stimulus was necessary to prevent complete collapse. Which is what we’re on the verge of now because it wasn’t big enough, and the GOP has been overrun by born again deficit hawks in the middle of a recession. It. Can’t. Be. Done.
The WH and Congress need to dump money into a jobs program NOW. This sudden paranoia about deficits because a Democrat happens to be President is ridiculous. Get the country on its feet so you’ve got some revenue coming in, then battle out deficits later. Like when Palin is in office.
August 5, 2011 at 10:46 pm
Doesn’t matter the party of the president, federal spending can only temporarily improve the sub-economies of where it spends the money but always does so at the expense of the greater economy as a whole. In fact, the stimulus spending is directly responsible for the rapid deterioration of the jobs market that occurred.
False premise #1: “The recession was a result of Bush tax cuts along with war spending.” No, the recession was brought on due to a collapse in an artificially inflated real estate market. It became a Great Recession because laws were in place that forced financial institutions to make risky loans and guaranteed those loans through a Ponzi scheme on the full faith and credit of the US.
False premise #2: “If we borrow money to spend nearly a trillion bucks as a stimulus, it will encourage the investment of private capital and create jobs.” No, the underlying cause of the recession was not allowed to run its course. You don’t fix a problem by tinkering with something else.
“False premise # 3: “The time has come to enact a major overhaul of 1/6 the economy. If not now, when?” How frickin’ stupid was that? If you don’t understand how that legislation killed any chance of job growth any time soon then you’re hopeless.
History is quite clear. The absolute worse thing that can be done is increase federal spending. Under normal recessions, tax cuts would allow the private sector to stimulate job growth but that won’t work this time – see 1st false premise. Just don’t raise taxes because that will make matters far worse.
August 5, 2011 at 10:49 pm
Nobody thinks the recession was caused by war and tax cuts. The deficit was.
August 5, 2011 at 10:55 pm
A very small portion of the deficit. Again, easily accessible information.
August 5, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Then why all of the blaming of Bush about the inherited economy?
August 5, 2011 at 11:17 pm
Because he was in charge when the housing thing was going on, which you described. You can’t very well inherit a crash that started before the election, then get tagged with CAUSING it.
August 5, 2011 at 11:23 pm
Another. ICN comment section. Destroyed.
August 5, 2011 at 11:26 pm
^ He says, with an utterly unsurprised tone.
August 6, 2011 at 12:00 am
Because he was in charge when…
Now you know you’re being dishonest. The blame Bush started before that happened and you also know that Presidents Clinton and Bush both warned The Congress that a serious problem was in the making.
Why is Greta being run over and over again? This is why Red Eye got bumped?
August 6, 2011 at 12:12 am
Since the S&P rating will still be getting the Fox News Alert for hours and hours to come, will Doocy & Kilmeade be on F&FW in a couple hours.
Fox & Friends – The Place To Be For Day Old News On S&P
August 6, 2011 at 1:37 am
http://robertreich.org/post/8542550924
August 6, 2011 at 3:17 am
Al, you were absolutely correct. Fox and Friends Weekend commences with “Bong” – ‘This is a Fox News Alert this morning as S&P Downgrades….’
Either you’re a news channel guru, or Fox News is becoming very predictable!
August 6, 2011 at 3:33 am
Fox & Friends started with a rather scathing dissection of S&P’s complicity in the mortgage meltdown. There wasn’t a hint of the standard “Obama’s fault” they usually run with.
August 6, 2011 at 4:39 am
“but the stimulus was necessary to prevent complete collapse.”
Not according to the Administration. According to their own projections, we’d have bottomed out at 9% had we done nothing.
August 6, 2011 at 9:16 am
“Had S&P done its job and warned investors how much risk Wall Street was taking on, the housing and debt bubbles wouldn’t have become so large” – Robert Reich
It occurs to me that Sec. Reich’s analysis ignores what seems to be a fairly fundamental component of how S&P did its job evaluating Wall Street’s housing bubble risk: Those risky mortgages were all insured and the Fannie Maes, Freddy Macs, and Morgan Stanleys all had their investments covered. It was and is the US Treasury bearing the risk, not Wall Street.
August 6, 2011 at 9:46 am
And to be fair, S&P has different teams of people rating each type of asset. The people rating mortgage-backed securities aren’t the same people who rate government bonds.
August 6, 2011 at 10:03 am
Laura, have you ever read my comments here or on Twitter where I’ve said that I wish President Obama had balls? They are quite frequent, maybe you should take a look at them.
August 6, 2011 at 10:55 am
Considering the point that CNBC talked it up during the afternoon, you’d really think they would break in some live coverage, or even in the hysteria that was Asian post-American close you’d think they’d run some live content in place of paid advertisements in the middle of the night on Thursday/Friday, but apparently that’s asking too much.
August 9, 2011 at 2:22 am
[...] business when we feel like it,' " snarled the unknown bloger of Inside Cable News. "Yes, CNBC [...]