Fox Says Attacking Iran Would be "Short-Lived" -- it Might Even Bring Down Interest Rates!
Reported by Melanie - March 29, 2007 -
Fox's "money guy," Neil Cavuto, held a roundtable discussion today (March 29, 2007) about what the "fallout for the stock market" would be if "diplomacy" with Iran "fails," and "the military option then becomes inevitable." According to his panelists, it wouldn't be that big a whoop.
Cheryl Casone, a "member of the network's business unit," kicked off the discussion and undoubtedly reassured Cavuto's audience:
Markets go down...and oil spikes. It depends on how -- what the military action is. If we're talking ground troops, that's not good. That's going to put more pressure on the market. If we're talking an air strike, you're not going to see as big of a sell-off as you would with ground troops.
Cavuto said he talked to "one analyst" who said, "$80.00 oil easily if this looks like it's getting out of control."
Fox's Rebecca Gomez said, "they're even saying maybe $100.00 a barrel," but then she went on to list other factors that could affect the price, such as hurricanes and the summer driving season.
Next came Meredith Whitney of CIBC who surely helped the viewers relax even more:
Most people know that if we had some kind of skirmish it would be short-lived. Now, there will be oil disruption and the Gulf of Hormuz controls a lot of oil traffic, so that would be temporary, but only temporary. So, you could have a spike in oil and the impact would be very short-lived, so it's not going to have an impact.
Cavuto wondered, "What if it's not" short-lived, and turned to Nina Eason of Fortune magazine.
Eason said she disagreed, "that this is a short-lived problem. [...] The world is lined up already questioning this government and here they are acting more like a rogue terrorist outfit...they're releasing the tape of this woman."
Back to Whitney who said, "Iran can't afford to go to war," and Cavuto responded by reminded her about the "eight billion bucks they've made this week!"
Back to Gomez who again talked about other variables but ended by laughingly saying that, "The only positive in all of this Neil, is that if we do have higher gas prices and oil prices, inflation will become a problem and the Fed will cut interest rates."
Hey, sounds good to me!
Cavuto said his "crackpot theory" is that "Iran and some nutty regimes have our number, have the western world's number. That we don't want war. We don't want conflict. [Can you believe this!] We don't want anything to get in the way so they know very -- hey, we can keep this puppy going -- we can keep prices going still higher and we can keep getting richer."
Eason was the last to speak. She said, "They can threaten to withhold oil supplies even if they don't do it [and] this whole, this whole buildup, military buildup in the region, US forces in the Persian Gulf for example, you could have an unintended military incident. Something could happen."
Comment: But who cares, right? I mean, as Whitney said, any "skirmish" would be "short-lived," and besides, it might actually be a good thing because interest rates would probably come down. My God. Fox would have us believe that this is a simple, uncomplicated issue, just like invading Iraq was supposed to be.
