Marketplace: News Archives

Tuesday, October 31, 2000
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It's Tuesday, the 31st of October. I'm David Brancaccio.

With the federal government one month into a new accounting year and only a week from Election Day, congressional and White House budget negotiators are no closer to completing work on a major tax bill and three remaining spending bills. If anything, as Marketplace's John Dimsdale reports from Washington, the budget negotiations appear to be regressing.

Dimsdale: "President Clinton today defended his veto of next year's spending for the White House, Treasury Department and Congress, a bill he had OK'd in budget negotiations."

Clinton: "I cannot in good conscience sign a bill that funds the operations of Congress and the White house before funding our schools. Simply put, we should take care of our children before we take care of ourselves."

Dimsdale: "Several congressional Republicans accused the President of going back on his word but Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott says his side will keep negotiating."

Lott: "We'll stay as long as it takes here to get our work done. And we're not going to cut and run."

Dimsdale: "Congressional leaders accuse Clinton of trying to keep Congress in Washington and off the campaign trail. That's a strategy that could backfire according to long time Democratic party strategist Ted van Dyk."

Van Dyk: "One could argue it could help Bush with his candidacy because he could say, 'Look, there's gridlock. Nothing could get done. If you elected me, we'd have a budget by now'."

Dimsdale: "The budget stalemate may force Congress to return after the election to finish up. The lame-duck session scenario sets up the prospect that a Democratic President and Republican Congress would finalize a budget for next year after the voters had decided to hand the White House to Republicans and Congress to Democrats. In Washington, I'm John Dimsdale for Marketplace."

In the category of "If you can't lick 'em, join em", German media giant Bertelsmann has struck a deal with music-sharing software firm Napster to form a membership-based music venture. As part of the deal, Bertelsmann will drop its lawsuit against Napster, breaking ranks with other music industry giants still trying to shut down Napster. From New York Marketplace's Jessica Smith has more.

Smith: "For tens of millions of music lovers, Napster's massive, free downloadable music library is heaven. For the industry, Napster's been the devil, sucking away potential sales. But with today's deal, some question if it's Napster making the Faustian bargain: sacrificing the underground, anti-commercial community feeling that propelled its success, in its attempt to stay alive and make money. Sean Fanning is the college dropout who created Napster two year ago."

Fanning: "In my discussions with Thomas and Andreas, their views of how this technology should evolve and the potential it has were consistent with mine, and that's why I'm so comfortable with this."

Heron: "Some consumers may be a bit turned off by a deal with the big corporate giant and the big evil major label."

Smith: "Stacey Heron is a music analyst at Jupiter Research. She says Napster's evolved from a college dorm phenomenon to a service used by moms and dads as well. Still, the thought of a monthly fee, possibly $4.95, sent users flocking to Napster's website today."

Heron: "They want to grab all the MP3s they can, there is a little bit of panic in the air am I gonna have to pay for this? Let me see what I can find quickly. Does that change the fact that consumers will pay for this as soon as it does become a subscription based service. No not really."

Smith: "The next step: seeing whether other labels join BMG and Napster, or whether they remain in court, trying to shut Napster down. In New York I'm Jessica Smith for Marketplace."

Last week we told you about the British government releasing its long-awaited report on so-called Mad Cow disease, which concluded that both government officials and scientists didn't recognize the dangers early enough and put the interests of farmers ahead of the public health. Now officials in the U.S. are trying to avoid any repeat of an animal disease moving into humans by warning hunters about a condition affecting wildlife herds in the West. Marketplace's Helen Palmer reports from the Health Desk.

Palmer: "Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, TSEs, are a family of deadly diseases that affect animals and people and basically eat holes in the brain. In cattle, it's called BSE, or mad cow disease. In sheep, it's scrapie. In people, it's Creuzfeldt Jacob Disease, or CJD. In deer and elk, they call it Chronic Wasting Disease, CWD, and that's the threat in the U.S."

Hansen: "We should be very highly concerned."

Palmer: "Mike Hansen is a research associate at the Consumer's Union."

Hansen: "In the western states where they've found this, in parts of Colorado and Wyoming, it really is reaching epidemic proportions."

Palmer: "As much as 15 percent of the deer herd out in the Colorado-Wyoming border area could be infected, and though there's no certain proof of any humans who've caught the disease from eating venison from sick deer, Hansen says the Centers for Disease Control is investigating one particular group of illness."

Hansen: "There's at least three, maybe four cases of CJD in people who are 30 years old or younger and the one thing they all have in common is they all eat deer and elk."

Palmer: "That should ring alarm bells for us all, he says, and especially for our food supply. There are no regulations to keep the meat of infected deer out of the food chain. True, you can't feed it to cattle, but no federal rules keep it out of pet food or pig or chicken feed. Research in the lab, he says, shows that the deer disease, CWD, can infect human brain cells as easily as mad cow disease, BSE, does. There's reason to beware."

Sharp: "If you're a hunter, look at your animal. See if it looks healthy."

Palmer: "Craig Sharp is director of the Montana Wildlife Federation. He says there've been no cases of CWD found in the wild in Montana yet, but all hunters should be aware there's a potential danger. From WGBH in Boston, I'm Helen Palmer for Marketplace."

The stock market dressed up like a bull for this Halloween, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 135 points or 1.25 percent. The Nasdaq Composite went up 5.5 percent. A French telecom firm Alcatel showed some nice profits and many investors used that as an excuse to snap up some much-devalued technology shares.

For more information on our story or to find the haunted house nearest you, check out National Trust Historic Hotels of America and Real Haunted Houses.