Sept. 5 -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain attracted a record 38.9 million television viewers to his acceptance speech last night, surpassing Democratic rival Barack Obama and McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin.
The total exceeded the 38.4 million who watched Obama accept the Democratic nomination in Denver on Aug. 28, Nielsen Media Research said today in a statement. Palin drew 37.2 million on Sept. 3 after three days of intense media coverage.
The last night of the Republican gathering in St. Paul, Minnesota, was seen in 28.3 million homes, breaking the record of the 27.7 million who watched Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention. McCain's ratings are the highest for a political convention since Nielsen began collecting data in 1960.
``This is likely to be a high turnout election,'' said Darrell West, a vice president of the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan policy research group in Washington. ``There were record turnouts in all of the caucus and primary states, we have had a record number of contributors and now we have a record number of television viewers.''
CBS, ABC, NBC and the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo broadcast McCain's speech. It was carried on cable by MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. In addition to those, Obama's address at Denver's Invesco field also aired on Black Entertainment Television and TV One, channels primarily geared to black audiences. Those networks didn't air McCain's speech.
Average Viewing
On average, 22.6 million viewers tuned into coverage of the Republican convention each day. The Republicans canceled most of the events on Sept. 1, citing Hurricane Gustav. Democrats averaged 20.4 million viewers over four days, Nielsen said.
``We're very excited about it,'' said Mark Salter, a senior McCain adviser. ``40 million Americans got to see John McCain as John McCain, a great patriot who puts his country first, rather than the fictional character the Obama campaign always talks about.''
``I'm glad we had a big audience, I'm glad he had a big audience,'' David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, said in an interview. ``The more people know about our respective visions about where this country should go, the better it is for us.''
Combined, McCain and Palin, who is Alaska's first-term governor, drew 76.2 million viewers, compared with the 62.4 million who tuned in to see Obama and running mate Joe Biden, the Democratic senator from Delaware. Biden drew 24 million viewers to his Aug. 27 speech.
Falling Records
McCain's viewership also exceeded the former Republican record of 21.9 million who tuned in to the 1976 convention, when President Gerald Ford won the nomination over Ronald Reagan; and the 20.7 million who watched the 1980 Democratic convention when President Jimmy Carter beat back a challenge by Senator Edward Kennedy. The Democrats' record stood until Obama's speech.
The Republican nominee's audience last night also exceeded the typical nightly viewing for the Beijing Olympics, a separate Nielsen report showed. U.S. Olympics viewers averaged 27.7 million a night, making the games the most watched.
Nielsen didn't include viewership estimates for Public Broadcasting Service stations or C-SPAN, which also aired the political conventions.
On NBC, McCain's speech followed the National Football League's season opener between the New York Giants and Washington Redskins, which may have increased viewing, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
``Carryover from earlier programming is a phenomenon well known to broadcasters,'' Jamieson said. ``Indeed programmers set new programs into the slot after highly viewed programs for that reason. So carryover is a plausible explanation.''
U.S. Economy: Payrolls Drop, Unemployment at 6.1%
By Shobhana Chandra
Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. lost more jobs than forecast in August and the unemployment rate climbed to a five-year high of 6.1 percent, a sign that the economic slowdown is worsening two months before Americans elect their next president.
Payrolls fell by 84,000 in August, and revisions added another 58,000 to job losses for the prior two months, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The increase in the jobless rate sent the misery index, which adds unemployment to inflation, to 11.7 percent, the highest level since 1991.
The deteriorating labor market raises the likelihood the Federal Reserve will postpone any increase in interest rates until next year, futures trading shows. Today's figures heighten the risk that President George W. Bush will become the first president since Richard Nixon to oversee two recessions, and may hurt fellow Republican John McCain's campaign to succeed him.
``It certainly increases the probability that we really are in a recession,'' William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. ``It is a weak number, including the revisions.''
Yields on benchmark 10-year Treasuries rose after dropping earlier to a four-month low of 3.55 percent, and were at 3.66 percent as of 4:11 p.m. in New York. The Standard & Poor's 500 Stock Index reversed earlier losses, and was up 0.4 percent to 1,242.31.
Workforce reductions at companies from UAL Corp. to Gannett Co. are adding to the woes of Americans hurt by lower home values, scarcer credit and higher prices. Separate figures today showed that mortgage foreclosures accelerated in the second quarter to the fastest pace since at least 1979.
Election Looms
Today's report is the penultimate look at the job market before the Nov. 4 U.S. election, with McCain vying with Democratic candidate Barack Obama to take the White House. McCain yesterday addressed the Republican Party convention, pledging to ``keep taxes low'' and rein in unnecessary government spending.
``This hurts McCain,'' said Daniel Clifton, head of policy research for New York-based Strategas Research Partners. ``He's going to get a bounce in the polls after the convention, but it could be less because of this,'' he said, referring to the increase in unemployment.
``Americans are hurting and we must act to create jobs,'' McCain said today in a statement. Obama, in a statement, said ``today's jobs report is a reminder of what's at stake in this election.''
Keith Hennessey, Bush's national economic council director, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that he remained ``an optimist'' about the prospects for growth. ``We hope'' the payroll readings ``will improve going forward,'' he said.
Economists' Forecasts
Payrolls, which have now fallen for eight months, were forecast to drop 75,000 after a previously reported 51,000 decline in July, according to the median estimate of 76 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The jobless rate was projected to remain at 5.7 percent.
Factory payrolls dropped 61,000 after decreasing 38,000 in July, with most losses coming in the auto industry.
Today's figures indicate the labor market is deteriorating faster than U.S. central bankers expected. Among Fed governors and district bank presidents, none projected an unemployment rate above 6 percent for the average in the fourth quarter.
Traders see the Federal Open Market Committee keeping the benchmark target rate for overnight loans between banks at 2 percent through year-end, futures show. The chance of a cut in December is 8 percent, up from zero a week ago, with the probability of an increase at just 2 percent, down from 20 percent a week ago and 43 percent in July.
Mortgage Rout
Rising unemployment may make it harder for Americans to keep paying their mortgages. The share of loans with one or more payments overdue rose to a seasonally adjusted 6.41 percent of all mortgages, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a report today. That's the highest since their data began in 1979.
The Labor Department report also showed the effects of the housing slump and the credit crisis that it triggered. Payrolls at builders fell 8,000 after decreasing 20,000. Financial firms trimmed payrolls by 3,000 for a second consecutive month.
Service industries, which include banks, insurance companies, restaurants and retailers, subtracted 27,000 workers after cutting 12,000 in July. Retail payrolls fell by 19,900 after a drop of 18,100.
`Clearest' Signal
``We're losing jobs in all kinds of industries now,'' Roger Kubarych, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Global Research in New York, said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio. ``This is the clearest recessionary signal we've seen.''
Government offices hired 17,000 after an addition of 6,000 in July. That meant private payrolls fell by 101,000 in August.
Today's report brings the total decline in payrolls so far this year to 605,000. The economy created 1.1 million jobs in 2007.
Employment is among the indicators tracked by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of U.S. economic cycles, in calling a recession. The others are sales, incomes, production and gross domestic product.
The group defines a recession as a ``significant'' decrease in activity over a sustained period of time, and usually takes six to 18 months to make a determination.
Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy, in July posted the biggest drop in four years after inflation.
Goldman's Forecast
The economy ``is close to stagnating,'' Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York, said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio. In part because of continued gains in worker productivity, employers will keep cutting jobs, sending the unemployment rate to 6.75 percent next year, he said.
The average work week remained at 33.7 hours. Average weekly hours worked by production workers fell to 40.9 hours from 41 hours, while overtime decreased to 3.7 hours from 3.8 hours.
Workers' average hourly wages rose 7 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $18.14 from the prior month. Hourly earnings were 3.6 percent higher than August 2007. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had forecast a 0.3 percent increase from July and a 3.4 percent gain for the 12-month period. Average weekly earnings increased to $611.32 from $608.96.
Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks gained, paring the worst weekly loss for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index since May, on speculation Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. will raise capital and investor Barton Biggs' prediction the market is near a bottom.
Lehman rallied 6.8 percent on a Reuters report the securities firm may sell assets to Blackstone Group LP and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. climbed more than 4 percent as banks also benefited from growing expectations the Federal Reserve will hold off raising interest rates.
``We're probably somewhere pretty close to a bottom, at least an intermediate-term bottom, from which we can mount a fairly powerful rally,'' Biggs, who runs the hedge fund Traxis Partners LLC, told Bloomberg Television.
Bank gains overpowered earlier declines of more than 1 percent in the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average following a jump in the unemployment rate to a five-year high. The S&P 500 added 5.48 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,242.31. The Dow rose 32.73, or 0.3 percent, to 11,220.96. The Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 3.16 to 2,255.88. About six stocks rose for every five that fell on the New York Stock Exchange.
Stocks tumbled in the morning after the government report showing an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent added to concern that the worst housing slump since the Great Depression and more than $500 billion in credit losses and writedowns at global banks are dragging the nation into a recession.
The S&P 500 pared its weekly loss to 3.2 percent and the Dow reduced its weekly retreat to 2.8 percent. The MSCI World Index tumbled 5.8 percent in the week, its steepest drop since the first week of trading after the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Bank of America gained 5.3 percent to $32.23. Citigroup added 4.2 percent to $19.07. JPMorgan increased 4.5 percent to $39.60.
Lehman Rally
Lehman rose for the seventh time in eight trading session, adding 6.8 percent to $16.20. Blackstone Kohlberg Kravis Roberts may buy some of the company's assets, including real-estate holdings and part of the asset-management unit, Reuters reported, citing unidentified sources familiar with the situation. Lehman's real-estate unit may be worth about $5 billion, the news agency said. Randy Whitestone, a Lehman spokesman, declined to comment.
Lehman rose to its highest level of the day after financial commentator James Cramer said on CNBC that the stock is a ``screaming buy'' whose business is unlikely to worsen.
Financial shares climbed 3.2 percent, the most among 10 S&P 500 industries. Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage-finance company, added 9.7 percent to $7.04. Wachovia Corp., the fourth- largest U.S. bank, increased 7.9 percent to $16.75.
The gain in banks came even as foreclosures rose above 1 percent in the second-quarter for the first time since the Mortgage Bankers Association began its loan survey 29 years ago, as people walked away from homes they couldn't refinance or sell.
`Real Opportunity'
``The headlines are screaming adversity, but if you look below it all you'll see real opportunity,'' said Hans Olsen, who helps oversee $120 billion as chief investment officer of JPMorgan Private Wealth Management in New York.
Mining companies and chemical producers in the S&P 500 added 1.1 percent. Morgan Stanley analysts called recent declines in fertilizer stocks ``unfounded'' and predicted the group would see the highest earnings in 2011.
Monsanto Co. increased 3.4 percent to $107.19. Credit Suisse Group AG told investors to buy shares of the world's biggest seed producer. CF Industries Holdings Inc., the maker of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers, rose the most among raw-material producers in the S&P 500 with a 6.3 percent gain to $131.20.
M&A Speculation
SanDisk Corp. had the biggest gain in more than eight years, soaring 31 percent to $17.64. Samsung Electronics Co. said it may buy the memory-card maker in what would be the South Korean company's biggest acquisition. Samsung, the world's second- largest chipmaker after Intel Corp., said it's considering various options, including an acquisition.
UST Inc. added 25 percent to $67.55. Altria Group Inc., the largest U.S. cigarette maker, is in talks to buy the nation's biggest snuff producer for more than $10 billion, the New York Times reported, citing people with knowledge of the discussions who weren't identified.
Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips fell as oil futures sank to a five-month low of $106.23 a barrel in New York. Energy producers in the benchmark index slumped 0.5 percent for a sixth straight retreat, the longest period of declines since 2002.
Utility stocks dropped the most among 10 S&P industries after Sanford C. Bernstein and Atlantic Equities analysts cut profit estimates for Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. owner of nuclear-power plants. The company, which lowered its forecast yesterday, lost 8 percent to $64.97 for the steepest retreat since 2001.
Europe, Asia
Stocks in Europe and Asia fell today on concern weakening economic growth will curb earnings at semiconductor makers while credit-related losses at banks increase.
``We're clearly in a bear market,'' Simon Moss, who manages the equivalent of $4.1 billion as investment director of U.S. equities at Scottish Widows Investment Partnership in Edinburgh, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. ``There is no doubt the economy is slowing.''
The employment report spurred investors to increase bets the Federal Reserve will hold interest rates steady for the rest of the year. Odds policy makers will leave the target rate for overnight loans between banks unchanged through January rose to 79 percent from 63 percent yesterday, futures trading shows.
The average price-earnings multiple of the S&P 500 has declined more than 5 percent from a five-year high of 26.2 on Aug. 15. The index is trading for 24.98 times profits in the last 12 months, or 14.8 times analysts' earnings estimates.
Companies in the S&P 500 are forecast to report profits in the fourth quarter that are 42 percent higher than a year ago, the biggest increase ever. Financial company earnings are projected to rise more almost five-fold, while income at mining and chemical companies may increase 35 percent.
Frank Pastore from KKLA in Los Angeles interviews Jill Stanek, the former registered nurse who served at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois. She testified before Congress about the death of infants who survived the abortion procedure only to die without care, giving rise to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
Frank Pastore: As you know Sarah Palin has five children her youngest is a child that has Down syndrome. She was diagnosed, obviously while she was still pregnant with the child, and she chose to go forward. You have got to remember that 90 percent of Down syndrome children are aborted in this country, and it brings the life question right back regarding Senator Obama and question of what was going on in Illinois, what his record was regarding partial birth abortion—what he claims. You’ll remember that he said pro-lifers were lying about his record in an interview.
We have actually got the nurse who was holding one of those babies that Barack Obama wanted to kill, that had survived an abortion. She is a nurse—a delivery nurse. She has held these children that have survived abortions and rocked them in her arms. She also has been before Barack Obama when he was Chairing the Committee. You may hear all kinds of things in the mainstream media, but this woman was there. She was in front of Barack Obama. She has made the case regarding why these children should live. And Jill Stanek has argued before him and lost because he in fact has refused to support [the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.]
I know there has been a lot of political pressure from the Obama campaign against you, but nonetheless you are standing strong and telling your story. So what happened?
Jill Stanek: I was a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois in 1999 when I discovered that not only was the hospital involved in late-term abortions, but the method of abortion that the hospital used called induced labor abortion—which is not rare, it is committed around this country—sometimes resulted in babies aborted alive and, if they were aborted alive, they were allowed to die in the hospital’s soiled utility room without any medical intervention whatsoever.
This came home to me one night when a nursing coworker was taking a little baby boy (who had been aborted because he had Down syndrome) to our soiled utility room to die because his parents didn’t want to hold him and she didn’t have time to hold him that night. When she told me what she was doing I couldn’t bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone and so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. Needless to say, this was a life-changing event, and made me into the pro-life activist that I never was before.
After privately appealing to the hospital to stop, and they said they wouldn’t, we asked the Illinois attorney general to intervene and make them stop by law. He said that there was no law that was stopping them—and this was a pro-life Republican AG. This brought about the reason to introduce the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act. This is in 2001 and this had been introduced on the Federal level in 2000 by the same name. And this was a bill that simply stated any baby born alive, no matter what gestational age, no matter what reason, wanted or not, was constitutionally protected as a legal person. And so I encountered Barack Obama in 2001 in a committee and when I was giving my testimony he decided that this would impose upon Roe v Wade—and so he voted “no” in committee. And then he went on to be the sole Senator to speak against it on the Senate floor, not only in 2001, but again in 2002.
He voted against it, it lost, so it was introduced again in 2002. On his Web site he has a quote from Pam Sutherland, the former CEO of Planned Parenthood Illinois, and he brags about the fact that she said that he came to her and wanted to strategize with Planned Parenthood about defeating this bill. So, he took a leadership role in opposing Born Alive. And that brings us to 2003 which pertains to … the interview with David Brody. In 2002 it passed with flying colors on the Federal level. It passed 98-0 in the U.S. Senate. Everyone voted for it, it was unanimous: Hillary, Kerry, Kennedy and Boxer even spoke in favor of it on the Senate floor. It passed overwhelmingly in the House….
Pastore: Everyone agreed, “Look if this child can survive the abortion we ought not let it lie there on the table and die or throw it in the trash can. We ought to help it survive. We ought to help the baby live.”
Stanek: Right, and furthermore, the pro-abortion group NARAL even went neutral on this bill on the Federal level. So Barack Obama, in 2003, voted “no” for the identical wording of the Federal bill which had changed slightly through the years. He voted against it. He voted against the very same identically worded legislation that even NARAL went neutral on. So, he voted to the left of NARAL.
Pastore: Let me get this right. So, the 98 members of the Unites States Senate voted unanimous 98-0 in favor of allowing these babies survive and helping them survive and, in the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama voted against that exact same language.
Stanek: Yes.
Pastore: Wow. Because he’s been presenting himself as saying, “Hey, if it had the same language I would have supported it. That’s why I’ve rejected the ban.” But it did have the exact same language.
Stanek: Yes, and I want to clarify: We are not talking about partial birth abortion where babies are half-way delivered. We are talking about an abortion procedure where the babies are fully delivered. Labor is purposefully induced before they think that the baby will be viable, so that the baby—they think—will die during the birth process or soon after. But they don’t do anything to kill the baby before the baby is delivered.
Pastore: … There’s no saline, there’s no salt, there’s no suturing, there’s no cutting, there’s none of that? So they just deliver the baby and because the mom wanted to terminate then you just kill the baby rather then help it survive.
Stanek: Yes, Sarah Palin is a great example of what typically happens. A mom is diagnosed with her baby having some sort of an anomaly, and they push very hard for these moms to abort, but the diagnosis comes during the second trimester, or early third. So, this would be the typical abortion procedure that Downs kids have. You know that 90 percent of Downs kids that are aborted—likely, most of them are aborted by this method…. If she had gone through this procedure in Illinois, and if her little baby boy Trig had survived, Barack Obama is on record as saying he doesn’t think there should be intervention.
Pastore: Wow.
Stanek: He actually said that during Senate testimony in 2002, and there are audio clips out there that were recently discovered that you might want to get a hold of. He said that he didn’t think—he acknowledged that these babies could be aborted alive, but he said that it would be a “burden”—that’s his word—on the “original decision”—that’s his word again—on the mother and the doctor to resuscitate these babies.
Pastore: What’s fascinating to me is you are the nurse, the delivery room nurse, you were there, you’ve been before his committee there’s no way to spin this. It’s not you reciting another news story. You are the news story.
Stanek: I think what happened there was that he got back from Hawaii and his people didn’t tell him that we had the actual vote, the actual archived vote from the Illinois general assembly that had been scanned and all over the Web and so when he went on that interview and called us lying liars, he was really waving a red flag not only before National Right to Life, but kind of laying down the gauntlet which really helped create more of the media furor, so that by Sunday night, his staff had had to tell The New York Sun that it was true—he had voted the way he said he had not voted. And actually factcheck.org—you know a non-partisan group—has confirmed that he has voted that way and that he misrepresented his vote.
Pastore: What does this now mean—in your understanding? I mean for so long, for four years he had misrepresented his record, he knew he was lying about it, now he’s caught. The issue of life has surfaced yet again….
Stanek: … What we are talking about Frank, is a man who is so adamantly pro-abortion that he is pro-infanticide. He is on record as being in favor of allowing these kids to die in order to complete the mom’s request, although her request—she has gotten her pregnancy terminated, you know when the baby’s born—but he thinks she has the right to a dead baby.
Rice talks with Libya's Gaddafi
 The visit showed the US does not have permanent enemies, Ms Rice said |
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is meeting Libya's Muammar Gaddafi on a visit to the north African country being hailed as historic.
She is the first US secretary of state to visit Libya since 1953.
Before arriving, she pointed out the "suffering" caused by Libya's long stand-off with the West.
The visit could be overshadowed by Libya's failure so far to honour a deal offering compensation to families of victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Libya was on the US state department list of sponsors of terrorism until 2003, when it abandoned weapons of mass destruction and renounced terrorism.
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Ms Rice's meeting with the Libyan leader began when Mr Gaddafi, wearing a white robe decorated with a broach in the shape of Africa, welcomed her and and her aides in a building in a government compound in central Tripoli.
There was no handshake between the two. As Rice entered the room, Mr Gaddafi raised a hand to his chest in a traditional gesture of welcome.
Earlier, Ms Rice said her visit showed that the US did not have permanent enemies.
"It demonstrates that when countries are prepared to make strategic changes in direction, the United States is prepared to respond," she told reporters on the way to Tripoli.
Earlier, she acknowledged that it was "a historic moment" but "it is one that has come after a lot of difficulty, the suffering of many people that will never be forgotten or assuaged".
The BBC's Rana Jawad in Tripoli says that six years ago, such a visit would have seemed far-fetched, but diplomacy and political will have overcome the obstacles.
'Way forward'
Earlier this month, Libya agreed to pay compensation to families of the victims of the Lockerbie aircraft bombing, for which it formally accepted responsibility in 2003.
The deal includes compensation for Libyan victims of the United States' retaliatory bombing raid over Libya in 1986.
Ms Rice's visit was partly intended to be a reward for successful completion of the deal, but Libya has not yet transferred the promised hundreds of millions of dollars into a humanitarian account.
The US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Welch, told Reuters that he was optimistic the transfer would happen soon but that Ms Rice would press Libya on this issue.
A trade and investment agreement may also be signed and the two countries have been negotiating a military memorandum to co-operate on fighting terrorism.
Col Gaddafi has stopped short of referring to America as a friend, but in a televised speech this week he said improved relations were a way for both countries to leave each other alone.
Our correspondent says that although the visit is largely symbolic diplomacy, many in Libya hope that US-Libyan relations will only improve in the long-run.
Ms Rice's trip will also include visits to Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
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