Tales from the road
Posted: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 4:37 PM by Sam Singal
By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor
We're just back from the classic American business trip: two cities in two days, late flights, bad weather, grumpy travellers wearing wrinkled suits. The best moment? When the flight attendant on our commuter jet flight from Cleveland to Detroit said she'd soon be "coming around the cabin to collect any remaining service items..." How could we have service items? There was no service on the flight. Not a drop to drink -- nothing. As I pondered that question with my seatmate, I looked down and saw the sequential runway strobe lights -- on the runway where we were supposed to be at that very moment. Just as I realized something was wrong, I felt the extra .5 G-force pull of the acceleration of the jet, which pointed skyward again. A few minutes later, our First Officer came on the PA to sheepishly explain that we had performed a "go-around" -- and said something about air traffic control -- and how it would take "about five minutes" to bank around and re-join the pattern and actually land. And I thought to myself, in the wake of the "service items" announcement, and in the wake of the missed approach: that in the space of 30 seconds we'd been treated to both the absolute inanity...and the deathly seriousness...of air travel in this era.
Back home in New York, we're preparing -- should I say -- a "fluid" broadcast for tonight. The top of the broadcast is what's fluid -- any number of stories could find their way up there -- but we also have some superb reporting from Ann Curry, and an emotional reunion between soldier and son.
How Now, Dow?
Andy Franklin did some research today that reminded me: it’s getting to be the time of year when we all focus a lot of attention on the economy. It’s the holiday shopping season (formerly known simply as the holiday season), a time when our shopping habits and intentions are scrutinized for clues about the health of the economy, the well-being of retailers, and the general mood of the populace at large. This year there’s more uncertainty than usual to stir into the mix: rising oil prices, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and a stock market that “goes from boom to doom on a daily basis,” as one analyst observed in today’s Times. (The same analyst also noted that “It’s an extremely emotional market,” and “investors better go to the drugstore and get a neck brace,” proving that - whatever his skills as an analyst - he knows how to give a good quote).
The Dow Jones Industrial Average - the Dow, among friends - is the barometer most often used to take our economic temperature (no, wait - that would be a thermometer). In any case, the Dow has traded this year between 12,000 and 14,000 - a range that not long ago would have been considered stratospheric. How long ago? How about 35 years ago today - when the Dow closed above 1,000 for the first time ever.
What was driving the market upwards back then? According to the Times that day, it was “the prospect of peace in Indochina, the re-election of Richard Nixon, the improving economy, and lessening business fears about 1973.” Looking back, some of that worked out pretty well, and some of it didn’t. But with all that - and with all that’s happened in the 35 years since - the Dow has climbed from 1,000 to over 13,000.
Not a bad return, and not a bad perspective. Happy holidays. We hope you'll join us for the Wednesday edition of the broadcast.
