Walter

It was hard to miss the news that Walter Cronkite died this past weekend. Every news station paid fitting tribute to the grandfatherly CBS anchorman. What caught my eye, however, was the enormity of his audience. In his heyday, three out of four Americans watched the news as it was read by Walter Cronkite. (www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/19/sunday/main5173016.shtml)

By its very definition, nostalgia hearkens back to a time that seems simpler and less complicated. In this current era of splintered marketplaces, that nightly following seems incomprehensible. Does anyone even know how many possible news sources there are today? CNN, MSNBC, BBC,CBS,NBC – seemingly more sources than there are letters to cover them. Would ten or twelve percent of the country not be considered an enormous following? What does this say, then, about the enormous influence of this man?

Walter Cronkite made it his first priority to be an objective reporter of the news. Today, it is difficult to say when an anchor is reporting or when he is editorializing. Cronkite himself said that he only interjected his own opinion one time in his life – that during the Vietnam War. He said he thought the war was un-winnable and that the US should pull out without victory. What impact did that have? Lyndon Johnson, the president at the time, said that when he heard that he “lost” Cronkite, he knew he lost the American people. Think about that for a moment out of the context of television. Do many of us ever utter any words that effect more than a few hundred people? Most of us fail to impact more than a dozen. Cronkite was able to influence the policy of the country.

His stated objective to report the news without bias might have changed history again had he not retired when he did. Cetrtainly, in Bill Moyer’s excellent reporting of the weapons of mass destruction fiasco that led to the Iraq war, even one objective article might have prevented the groundswell of public opinion that led to that war. www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html.

I think it is safe to say that no one will ever again wield so powerful a voice to shape public opinion. In that regard, Cronkite’s death marked the end of an era.


By Myron Gushlak

End of Recession

The million dollar question as we hit the mid point of the third quarter of 2009 is when will the recession end? I am reminded of the age old story of a business owner asking his accountant what was the sum of two plus two. The accountant replied, “What do you want it to be?”

A quick perusal of the web will find you a prediction that the end of this current quarter will mark the low point of the economy, to one that predicts the effects of the recession will last until the end of 2010. The financier, Conde Nast, who made a bit of a name for himself by predicting the real estate collapse back in 2002 illustrates the problem. He has predicted that it will end soon (www.portfolio.com/views/columns/economics/2009/01/07/Spotting-Signs-of-Economic-Recovery), and that it will not end anytime soon. (www.portfolio.com/views/columns/economics/2008/11/11/Economic-Predictions-for-2009) . Nast may be the only one, then, certain to be correct when all is said and done. Feel like relying on the leading economic indicators as the tea leaves for the future? Not so fast. The interpretation of the meaning of these indicators is as diverse the crowd at a United Nations Bake Sale.

At Blue Water Partners, www.BlueWaterPartners.com we are well aware that people are always making money no matter how bad the economy. I suspect the end of the recession will come at different times for each of us, or to paraphrase George S. Kaufman, “It depends on your threshold for pain.”


By Myron Gushlak