Parliamentary elections in Greece saw the conservative-leaning New Democracy party win a narrow victory over the left-wing anti-austerity Syriza coalition. This was good news for an array of major players who prefer Greece to stick to the current punishing bailout plan arranged by European countries.
ABC World News showed which angle mattered most when anchor Diane Sawyer led a report (6/18/12) on the election results this way:
And now we move on to your money and the momentary sigh of relief for every American with a 401(k). The voters of Greece this weekend decided to stay the course in Europe, sparing the U.S. stock market and those around the globe a wild upheaval.
So the first order of business is how the election impacts American retirement investments. This has actually been a recurring theme on ABC‘s newscast when it comes to European financial crisis. On June 17:
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: The markets were bracing for the worst following this election. Remember, Europe is our largest trading partner. So whatever happens there affects all bottom line here, and in particular, our 401 (k) s.
June 11:
JEFFREY KOFMAN: Greeks vote this Sunday, the outcome could force them to leave the Euro, destroying confidence in the currency.
By Monday, U.S. stocks would plummet, hurting your 401k.
June 10:
DAVID MUIR: Next to economy this evening and to what could be another volatile week for your 401 (k). We reported last night here on Spain and that bombshell bailout request….
The Dow, anticipating Spain would ask for this help, moved upward this past week, the best week all year. An American 401 (k) with $100,000 saved added $3,500 in just a week.
June 9:
DAVID MUIR: We begin with that developing story that has huge implications for American jobs and American 401(k)s, with the world markets watching this so closely.
Late today, the bailout bombshell in Spain. That country now asking for up to $100 billion or more to stay afloat.
May 19:
DAVID MUIR: The President pushing through a stimulus plan here in the US. Europe pushing through austerity and deep cuts. We see what’s happening in the UK, sliding into another recession. Greece, on the brink. And, of course, our 401 (k)s so connected to it all.
May 7:
DIANE SAWYER: And all across America this morning, people were bracing for the aftershock of a political earthquake overseas, upheaval which rattles the US economy. It reaches the US economy, reaching right into American 401 (k) s and ABC‘s David Muir tells us what happened and what happens next. David?
DAVID MUIR: Diane, good evening. You know when it comes to the economy, we now live in a very small world, which is why when voters speak across Europe, Americans, everyday investors looking to protect their 401 (k) s are now listening too.
On top of all this, it’s worth recalling an ABC piece from last November, which presented cushy Greek retirements as the reason American workers can’t retire. And those Greeks were wrecking investments too, as Sawyer explained:
If you were watching your stocks today, you saw a nosedive. The Dow down nearly 300 points, so, what changed? Well, blame it on the country of Greece, long criticized for being undisciplined, and now threatening American retirements.
We know that our corporate media system prioritizes the needs and interests of certain viewers (in this case, the roughly one-third of the American work force who have 401(k) plans). The outlets need to pretend that’s not really the way things work—the news is for everyone! But when you present political developments around the world primarily through the prism of how they affect well-to-do investors, you’re sort of giving away the game.
The use of the possessive adjective here is interesting, isn’t it?
It switches from “your” to “our” and back again.
Might this be an effort to effect a sense of camaradie among this host and these reporters (and by extension the network which employs them), and the “ordinary Americans” who have 401 (k)s?
As pointed out above, they’re not so ordinary, but that’s the myth.
And the other myth here may be that the corpress are just like you, and thus worthy of your trust.
What do you think?
An interesting aside:
In one of the excerpts from ABC, a reporter asserts that”Europe is our largest trading partner.” This is misleading. The US does not do trade with “Europe”; they do trade with separate European countries, some of which are important trading partners, such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. But as a proportion of total trade, the US’s largest trading partner is, of course, Canada–a country that American media is barely cognizant of, particularly when it comes to reporting on the US economy.
In fact, underplaying–or outright ignoring–Canada’s contribution to the US economy is a recurring theme, even in economics reporting done by outlets like Bloomberg and the Associated Press. This is perhaps an understandable reaction to the fear and anxiety–both political and economic–surrounding the European debt crisis. But exaggerating the significance of American exports to a handful of European nations at the expense of its massive trade partnership with Canada is puzzling, considering that the US’s relatively minor trade with Europe is one of the central reasons why even a hefty cut in exports to some eurozone nations would have minimal impact on US GDP. Now, if Canada’s current housing bubble were to pop, the hit to America’s largest export market would be serious and painful–and American manufacturers would be disproportionately affected. Of course, reporting on such information requires the US press to take an interest in their northern neighbours–and to have a command of even the most basic facts about the US’s largest trading partner.
The capture of both major political parties and the corporate media, have lead to this arrogance… The ruling class and their hirelings haven’t the need to conceal their contempt for the majority of the population.
ABC– Conduit for Pentagon propaganda:
On Tuesday night’s evening news, Sawyer and two colleagues, David Muir and Bill Weir, spent six or seven minutes extolling the merits of the US Air Force’s Predator drones and their deadly attacks in Afghanistan. The Predators, according to Pakistani government and media sources, murdered some 700 civilians in that country in 2009, but the CIA-US military program of killings by drone attack on that side of the border is “covert,” without the official sanction of the Islamabad regime. Thus, Sawyer and company had to be satisfied with covering the US military’s increased use of drones in Afghanistan.
According to a companion piece by Weir on its web site, ABC News was “granted exclusive access to the ground control station at the California [Air Force] base, one of six in the country where the planes are flown.” In other words, the broadcast report was a component part of the military’s official propaganda effort, prepared and vetted with the collaboration of Pentagon officials…
The entire “news report” Tuesday was nothing more nor less than a defense of neo-colonial warfare and mass murder by well-paid hirelings of the American establishment.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/abcn-j14.shtml
I have a sort of disagreement with one of your points: you say that the point about 401k prioritizes the one-third of American workforce which do own 401k.
1. I think the more insidious assumption here is that the interests of the general public and the interests of the stock market are the same. Even if one-third of the American workforce have 401k, but that doesn’t change the fact that stock ownership is extremely concentrated with the top few percent owning more than half the stocks.
2. The general public has no specific interest in higher stock prices, as Dean Baker has pointed out many times ( here for example). The reason is simple: if the fundamentals of the economy are the same and the stock market plunges on irrational fears, one should be happy that they get the same priced stock for a cheaper price.
The corporate news media would have you believe that all of the world’s problems can be translated into and understood through the dollar valuation of your own 401k. This aspect of market ideology is presented as-all-you-need-to-know; the first thing you need to know is how thoroughly discredited this ideology has been demonstrated to be by the ever widening gap between reality and the claims it has made for itself.
Corporate news always presents from the perspective of the idle rich owners and their unearned income revenue stream passing to them—and derived from—the productive work of those who receive earned income. The wealthy become wealthy overwhelmingly though ownership of the revenue streams created by workers who receive diminishing earned income.
The 401k defined contribution plans were never put in place to provide security for workers, but are the means of further exposing workers to the vagaries of the market, a social insecurity of sorts. The corporations were absolved of responsibility to retired workers provided by defined benefit retirement plans by their conversion to defined contribution 401k plans. The markets that drive down wages down now drive down retirement income.
Stock prices are high because of the false assumption that there are enough stocks available for 401k plans to purchase them without bidding their prices up into a bubble.
No finance capitalist insiders to bubble creation have incentive to report it. The bubble creators make money while it inflates, those facing financial collapse will not reveal their distress for fear of precipitating their own immediate collapse, and those who are betting on the collapse hope to see their bets pay off when it does collapse.
The concept of corporations as “job creators” can find acceptance a truism only when the corporate media repeats this trope regularly without considering the fact that Wall Street cheers for every workforce downsizing as a profit generating efficiency, and that corporate reductions of payroll are rewarded in the market with increased dividends and higher stock prices.
But folks, we all have to keep in mind one thing, these people reporting the news, and those who own then news really are looking at the world through 401k lens, because it is important to them. It’s like the old joke about the Man who went to a party, and complained bitterly that the Hostess had 21 guests, and somehow there was only 18 steaks served on a platter, first come, first served. The punchline is “You should have heard the Screaming and fighting and name calling; really I don’t know what the problem is, My three steaks were just fine tasting”.
These folks have already grabbed the steaks off the plates and are enjoying their meal, so they are reporting the meal is just fine and can’t understand why you not.
Glenn is more right than, perhaps, he knows.
Anyone’s (“yours, ours – who cares?) 401k is, indeed a concept to drive away the defined benefits concept of retirement packages. But it is more than that. It also encourages the folks who do contribute to such plans to give their money to contracted managers, who will put them in mutual funds from a limited list that is pre-selected by those managers. Then, the contributor is “allowed” to fiddle with the allocation of the assets from time to time. Rarely does the contributor take any advantage of this ability, but, even if one did, the ability to react to market changes, via one’s 401k, is so limited that any downturn (or upturn, for that matter) in the market will leave the contributor appearing as a financial three-toed sloth in a world of hummingbirds.
Apart from that, do you really believe that it is wise to fork over a substantial sum to someone you do not know personally, hoping that the game you are playing with them will lead to a more cushy retirement? Especially if they are guaranteed to make a fee from you while you play the game?
The concern about European election impacts on American 401ks indicates how the corporate/media will treat any legislation/regulation that negatively impacts The Market and therefore the future survival of citizens with 401ks. Replacing Social Security with 401ks is a brick in the corporate strategy to counter regulations and to undercut citizen actions regarding the environment, wage and benefit issues, and anything else that might negatively impact The Market.
Most Americans don’t even give a shit about who their government is torturing, imprisoning without trial, and/or killing in their name. Why should they care about the economic fate of the Greek or the French?!
This is an overwhelmingly egocentric nation. The peace movement in the 60’s was motivated by the personal risk posed by the draft not by some moral imperative. That is why there’s no peace movement today.
In this case, the press is only giving the viewers what they are only interested in.
as a french citizen who just voted socialist, i hope my american friends don’t hold it against me when our president starts pushing back against finance capital’s stranglehold
ajamu: So glad you voted “socialist.” I would have done the same thing but, in America, “socialism” is a dirty word. The 1% and their herd of sheeple have convinced us of this. Am looking forward to your new president pushing back against austerity, since, in America, austerity applies to the little people only.
Your name does not sound like a French name, however. May I ask if you were born in France?
Free Spirit speaks a truth too horrible to comprehend. I would like to think the 60’s anti-war protesters had something on their minds besides their own individual survivals. But it is true that some people, at least, are driven by selfish goals.
And this brings up a really good point, that a national draft would probably put an end to ALL of the wars this country engages in. When the children of the wealthy and the elite, the children of the middle class, the children of brainwashed workers who vote against their own interests, when these people are faced with the possibility of personal loss, war will no longer be one more government program to benefit the warmongers and their MIC.
We should all work for a national draft.
Just how much trust can you put in an article when one of the premises of that article – a fact that is basic to an understanding of the US economic situation – is incorrect? I refer to the statement claiming that Europe – with which the US does no trade at all (as opposed to Germany, England, etc.) is the US’s largest trading partner, when any first year economics student knows that country is Canada. Second is China. Then comes Mexico (yes!), then Japan. Germany stumbles in in fifth place, then the UK, then South Korea before France.
When the authors miss even basic facts such as this that can be found in less than ten seconds via Google, I seriously question their reliability on any statement in the article.
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sorry, hit the enter button by mistake. To finish….
[O]f course, the fact that Bianna Golodryga is a hot looking babe qualifies her to make all sorts of inane remarks on tv without anyone questioning their veracity. That’s standard in broadcast media, no pun intended. It’s also unfortunate, since too many people will take her word on these things without verifying the facts themselves.
Her creds include a minor in Economics….I would say that it’s very minor…I might add that it appears from the US economic situation that her husband, Peter R. Orszag, the former budget director for the Obama Administration, likely has similar credentials for advising and discussing economic issues.
But I digress, don’t I?
The only people they are “giving away the game” to are those of us who are already aware of what’s going on. Your typical corporate-stream media viewer takes everything at face value and does not think critically about what is presented to them. Therefore, they will continue to think what the media wants them to think, which is, “Europe, and particularly Greece, is raiding your hard-earned nest egg! It certainly isn’t the fault of Wall St… or the Fed… or the European Central Bank!”
Maybe some one can explain why this is important? it seems like our media should report world news in a context of how it effects American interests.
From reading the comments, I learned that Canada is our top market, and Germany is #5, and this is not made clear in our media. I guess I can imagine some nefarious reason for this not being mentioned in the media…
But Americans don’t vote in Greek elections, so who cares what we think? It seems like writing an article on the reporter at a sports game for trying to influence a referee’s call from last night’s game.