If you watched the October 28 CBS “Evening News,” you would probably have been expecting a rough ride today based on their reporting.
The likely ousting of Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O’Neal prompted CBS correspondent Randall Pinkston to tell viewers to expect the worst as far as the stock market goes.
“O'Neal's likely exit sets the stage for another rough ride on Wall Street this week with more dramatic peaks expected in crude oil prices which hit nearly $92 a barrel last week and further uncertainty in the housing market,” Pinkston said.
However, in the short-term, that’s not the case. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 64 points to close at 13,869 one day after his gloomy report. And, investors even welcomed the news of the shakeup at Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER), as its stock finished up 2 percent.
“Evening News” didn’t stop with the dower predictions. To cast an even darker shadow on the economy, the report trotted out one “expert” who is expecting a recession.
“It's telling us if history is of any use to us at all, that we're probably facing a recession within the next – within the next year, if not sooner,” Charles Geisst, author of “Wall Street: A History” said.
It’s not as if CBS would have had to have gone out of their way to find someone with a more optimistic outlook. One leading economic voice is skeptical of the recession forecast.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman and media darling Alan Greenspan on October 10 said “odds are better than 50-50 the
