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A debit to The Wall Street Journal for its page-one press release for Bill Gates on Thursday headlined “Bill Gates Issues Call For Kinder Capitalism.”
We’re not sure what about this scoop—hand-delivered from Microsoft and apparently embargoed to coincide with his Davos speech—merited above-the-fold, front-page treatment. It’s certainly news when one of the world’s richest capitalists critiques (however mildly) the system that made him wealthy, but there is very little substance here. Essentially Gates’s brainstorm is that private companies should use their resources to help the world’s poorest people.
“We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well,” Mr. Gates will tell world leaders at the forum, according to a copy of the speech seen by The Wall Street Journal…
“The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy—even beyond the market opportunities—that’s something that appropriately ought to be done,” he said.
This story manages to be virtually idea-free. It contains nothing beyond sentiment and seems more a PR attempt actually to head off real action to curb capitalism’s excesses.
If Gates does have an idea to transform capitalism and help billions out of poverty the Journal doesn’t say. The few details of Gates’ thinking are fuzzy at best. This story would have been better played inside.
Or, if Gates really thought it deserved to be on page one, the WSJ should have sold him an ad.
A credit to The Financial Times for comprehensive coverage of monoline insurers on Thursday. The Peach One had several stories about these bond-insurance companies that were timely coming a day after a 600-point market swing caused by talk of a bailout of the troubled sector.
The New York Times also printed a good front-page article Thursday.
The fate of the insurers who must make good on bad bonds is important for close business-press readers trying to determine how far the unraveling of the financial system will go.
Oddly, The Wall Street Journal‘s skimpy page-one coverage of the story of the day was limited to a couple of paragraphs in a story on the stock market, and its only story devoted to the monolines was buried on C3.
One can’t have everything, but this strikes us as a dropped ball. It’s especially strange since the WSJ had a good page-one story on the monoline industry last week (which we credited).
We like this blog item calling for greater transparency in derivatives trading from Times columnist Floyd Norris, mostly for the comments at the end.
Said one commenter:
Remember, capital markets can only function if the participants have “confidence” in the integrity and sound standards of these institutions; otherwise chaos and collapse are the outcome of neglecting such fundamental principles.
And another:
What we are witnessing is a replay of the 1929 stock market crash, this time in the credit and housing markets instead of the stock market. The causes of the two crashes are the same. The refusal of regulators to step in and stop abusive leverage and fraud.
All four comments are worth reading, as is Norris’s item itself.
It’s that sniffling, sneezing, stuffy-head, aching, fever time of year. Maybe that’s why much of the business press wrote like it was tanked up on NyQuil last week. How else to describe the epidemic of “America sneezes, world catches cold” metaphors that dribbled onto the pages and wafted through the airwaves?
From The Daily Telegraph:
An old adage warns that when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. If US consumers stop spending, the effects are felt far and wide. British consumers are already heavily indebted and house prices are high, prompting fears that the economy may not be able to weather the storm.
Wait. Is the British economy under storm watch or under quarantine? Perhaps it caught pneumonia in the storm?
Here’s the Associated Press:
Despite the maxim that “if the U.S. economy sneezes” the world gets sick, Europe’s biggest economies like Germany, France and Britain appear poised to push through any contagion due to diversifying markets and a lesser exposure to the credit squeeze caused by the U.S. subprime crisis.
It seems “adage” and “maxim” are code words for bad writing ahead.
When the U.S. economy sneezes, the Mexican economy catches cold. A U.S. recession would lead to even deeper economic problems in Mexico and most likely would spur greater illegal immigration..
On television, CNN anchor Don Lemon mixes metaphors:
And you know the saying: if the U.S. sneezes the world catches a cold? Well, coming up, we’ll see whether Wall Street’s wild ride is making global markets even more dizzy.
While his colleague Susan Lisovicz points out the obvious:
This is the—the U.S. is the world’s biggest economy. The U.S. sneezes, everybody else catches a cold. It is an old expression.
Even The Wall Street Journal’s page one wasn’t immune.
“This time we have something of a vaccine when the U.S. sneezes,” says Claudio X. Gonzalez, chairman of Kimberly-Clark de Mexico SA…
Maybe we can blame it on the Davos elite who held a session last week at the World Economic Forum called “If America sneezes, does the world still catch a cold?”
The wiseacres at NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep, nearly had listeners spilling their fair-trade latte foam all over their khakis with this send-up of the cliché:
INSKEEP: When the world’s great economic minds gathered for a summit this week in Davos, Switzerland, they scheduled a debate on the question—if America sneezes, does the world still catch a cold?
MONTAGNE: We put that very question to NPR health reporter Allison Aubrey, who’s skeptical.
ALLISON AUBREY: Yeah, I am skeptical. I guess the typical spray from a sneeze is only a few feet, which is obviously much shorter than the distance between America and Hong Kong. If the Hang Seng Index catches a cold, it’s far more likely to come from shaking America’s hand, which is a much more likely way of transmitting a cold.
MONTAGNE: And it may be time to rethink the entire cliché. Maybe when America drinks too much, then Nikkei gets a hangover.
INSKEEP: Or even when the whole world repeats the same stock phrase, we all lose money together.
Nyuck. Nyuck. But don’t give the literati at NPR too much props. That exchange came two days after its Alex Chadwick said this:
There’s that old business expression, when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. And I guess some people think it’s more than the U.S. sneezing now. The U.S. may be coming down with the flu so the rest of the world is getting ready for—I don’t know what—pneumonia?
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