Terrorist Attacks Bring Out Paine, Professor Navarro
Guess what? While it’s hellish to fly out of LAX and many other major airports right now, frequent travelers report that at John Wayne it’s never been easier. See details on page 12 David Paine, who runs OC’s biggest independent PR agency, said that within 45 minutes of the planes slamming into the World Trade Center, clients were on the phone asking him what they should do: “It was a slam dunk. I told them, ‘You’re pulling your ads.'” Amid the chaos, Paine said he closed his seven-person New York office for a couple of days. “We lost $200,000 in revenue in two weeks.” Paine knows he’s not alone: “We were on the brink of a recession anyway and now we’re pushed into one.” Seeking levity in a grave situation, Paine quipped, “I think all businesses should file a class-action lawsuit against Osama bin Laden for lost economic activity.” For more reflections of Paine and other OC notables, see the front page and the Viewpoints on page 71 Paul Ward of Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth offered some crisis humor, too, in referring to his firm’s Oct. 9 intellectual property conference: “It’s still the American way to sue each other over patent rights.” EE RR will moderate the rib-splitting event at the Hyatt Regency Irvine Oct. 9……. ….
…….. UCI biz prof Peter Navarro, a leading commentator on the state energy crisis, has found a prominent platform for opining on the terrorist attacks, too,a lengthy article in the Sept. 17 Barron’s. Navarro suggests President George Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan “should and probably will” risk inflation in order to jump-start the economy with interest-rate cuts, an increase in the money supply, military and anti-terrorist buildups and a bailout of airlines, insurance companies and other institutions. Bush must provide “a swift and mighty military response,” yet not in a way that destabilizes the oil markets. If Saudi Arabia were lost as a partner in solving this crisis, “the U.S. runs the risk of an oil-market meltdown the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1970s.” Navarro predicts the eventual winners from the current turmoil will include the Internet and electronic trading systems: “The Trade Center terrorists not only destroyed a mammoth physical location for the world’s financial markets. They also drove a stake through the heart of the old centralized financial markets run on physical trading floors” Listen up: “Being an editor is a lot more fun than being a publisher,” the Register’s Chris Anderson, who has been both, tells Publisher RR in this month’s installment of the Cable Business Journal TV show. Referring to the Register’s circulation competition with the LA Times, Anderson declares, “I’m happy to report we are winning the battle” UCI prof Judy Rosener was one of four “thinkers” on a half-hour segment of Charlie Rose last week discussing the terrorist attacks.
