Heh. From Editor and Publisher:
Moody’s Investors Services downgraded The New York Times Co. debt to “junk” levels Friday.
Times Co.’s “corporate family rating,” as well as the rating on its senior unsecured debt was lowered to Ba3 — three notches below investment grade — from Baa3, Moody’s lowest investment-grade rating.
And Moody’s assigned a speculative-grade rating to Times Co. liquidity, despite the $250 million loan from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu announced earlier this month.
Times Co. commercial paper, the short-term securities used for operating costs, was downgraded to Not Prime from Prime-3. Moody’s said it was withdrawing its ratings for Times commercial paper.
The slide into junk may not be over, Moody’s added by assigning a negative outlook, suggesting a further downgrade is possible.
“The downgrade reflects Moody’s expectation that ongoing deterioration in newspaper advertising revenues will continue to place significant downward pressure on [The Times Co.’s] EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) despite aggressive cost management, and that the earnings decline along with a significant increase in the underfunded pension liability will weaken credit metrics considerably,” said John Puchalla, Moody’s vice president and senior analyst.
Moody’s estimates that Times Co. revenue will fall by about 10% in 2009 and EBITDA will plunge 30% to 35%.
This is despite a $250 billion loan to the New York Times from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim — at an interest rate of 21%
Herb Denenberg from Philadelphia’s The Bulletin, says that this year we may see the obituary of the New York Times:
…The Times has done everything it can to undermine the war against terrorism. For example, The Times opposes warrantless intercepts of phone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists. It opposes Guantanomo. Mr. Feder says it has opposed every technique used to fight the war on terror. What’s more, it has a habit of reporting national security secrets on its front-page. Mr. Feder points out if the present editors of The Times were on the job during World War II, they would have put the date of the Normandy invasion on the front-page. They would say the public has a right to know. They would ignore the question of whether the German High Command had the right to know. And they would also ignore the American blood that would be shed by the usual irresponsibility and disloyalty of the treasonous Times.
Mr. Feder says The Times has its gun sites on America, on American values, on gun owners, on conservatives, on the American military, on law enforcement personnel, on the religious, on the Judeo-Christian tradition and on about everything else most Americans consider vital to America as we know it.
But in addition, The Times is even more dangerous as it sets the news table for the mainstream media. Almost in lock step, most of the mainstream media not only covers the same stories as The Times but also covers them in the same way. So The Times, in a real sense, poisons the biggest segment of the media with its biased, dishonest and fraudulent coverage.
One aspect of this influence of The Times, which I’ve never seen discussed, is what kind of feeble puppets in the mainstream media are unable to make their own decisions on what stories to cover and how to cover them.
Leave a comment