How Will Media Report Tuesday's Stock Market Collapse?

February 10th, 2009 5:27 PM

The Obama-loving media might adore flowery rhetoric with little substance, but stock investors sure don't.

That's what traders and market professionals said was responsible for Tuesday's stock market collapse after Wall Street was tremendously disappointed with the lack of specifics in the highly-anticipated bank rescue plan presented by newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

As such, it's going to be fascinating to see how sycophantic press members spin the market's almost 400-point decline.

Will it resemble how Bloomberg reported the event:

“Everybody is disappointed in the lack of details,” said Diane Garnick, who helps oversee $354 billion as an investment strategist at Invesco Ltd. in New York. “They came out and said, ‘We want you to believe that we’re still working on this.’ Well, we knew that last night.”  [...]

“There’s still a lack of clarity,” Dan McMahon, director of equity trading at Raymond James Financial Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida, said of Geithner’s proposal. “These are smart people and they’re supposed to have it figured out. We’ve been waiting all week and then he said nothing.”  [...]

“No one has put anything on the table yet to stop the bleeding,” said Michael Nasto, the senior trader at U.S. Global Investors Inc., which manages $3.5 billion in San Antonio. “This won’t stop until someone comes up with a viable plan and we can see light at the end of the tunnel.” 

Think any of those market professionals will be interviewed by mainstream media outlets in the next 24 hours? Or how about those quoted by MarketWatch:

"The market was really hopeful we would get something substantive out of Geithner and the Treasury today, but once again, he was bedeviled by the details," said Bill Knapp, investment strategist with Mainstay Investments.
 
In particular, Knapp and others said the biggest disappointment was a lack of details about a possible public-private participation plan and what direction such a plan would take. Reports have circulated about a possible "bad bank" plan where the government might buy toxic assets off of banks' balance sheets, but there was no hint from Geithner on what or when that may happen.
Will this be the kind of reporting you'll be seeing this evening from Brian, Charlie, and Katie?
 
Stay tuned.