>> tom: uncle sam is put on notice. standard & poor's lowers its outlook for long-term u.s. debt. >> we continue to think that the underlying state of u.s. public finance is continuing to weaken. >> susie: the ratings agency warns washington to agree on a plan to cut the nation's debt or risk losing its top-tier credit rating. you're watching "nightly business report" for monday, april 18. this is "nightly business report" with susie gharib and tom hudson. "nightly business report" is made possible by:

this program is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. captioning sponsored by wpbt >> susie: good evening everyone. a major sell-off on wall street today after standard & poor's ratings agency lowered the long- term outlook for u.s. debt to "negative" from "stable." and tom, that change was a wake- up call for americans who always boast about the u.s.'s high- quality, triple "a" status. >> tom: susie, s&p says there's a one-in-three chance that it could lower the long-term rating on the u.s. within two years. the news spooked investors. the dow fell 140 points, recovering from a loss of 248

points earlier in the session. the nasdaq lost 30 and the s&p was off 14.5. big board volume starting out the week above one billion shares while nasdaq volume topped 1.8 billion shares. >> susie: it's the first time in history that u.s. has received a negative outlook for its debt. so how serious is this? and what does it mean to your investments? erika miller reports. >> susie: america's sterling credit rating has long been a source of national pride. that triple "a" rating is also a key reason investors worldwide buy u.s. treasury bonds. although s&p officially affirmed that top grade today, the agency took the first step toward a downgrade. yes, the obama administration and house republicans have made progress on a plan to slash the budget deficit. s&p's david beers says the concern is nothing will be finalized until after the 2012 elections. >> clearly implementation is the

issue here. it's one thing to agree on things. it's another to actually have credible measures underlying an agreement. >> reporter: under the most pessimistic scenario, s&p predicts the net national debt could surpass 90% of gross domestic product within two years. so what does a negative outlook mean to individual investors? if you own stocks, investment strategist jim awad recommends doing nothing. >> i think investors should assume that politicians under duress and pressure and screaming and shouting will put together a plan that is credible enough to satisfy the credit agencies and international investors. therefore, u.s. domestic investors should assume this will create a correction, not a bear market, and they should carry on with their usual investment programs. >> reporter: the advice for bond investors is not as clear cut. on the one hand, most credit experts do not see any risk to

interest payments or principal for people relying on treasuries for income. but u.b.s.'s anne briglia warns interest rates are likely to trek higher. >> our forecast, even before this happened-- this announcement today-- was for a gradual rise in bond yields over the course of the next 12 months. and so when interest rates rise, bond prices obviously go down. one way to mitigate that risk as an individual investor is to focus on shorter maturities rather than longer maturities. >> reporter: if the u.s. debt rating is eventually downgraded, it would likely be to "double a plus." that would put the u.s. below the u.k. and france, but still ahead of japan and china. erika miller, "nightly business report," new york. >> tom: here are the stories in tonight's n.b.r. newswheel: the biggest-ever hedge fund insider trading case is winding down. the prosecution and defense in the raj rajaratnam trial rested today without the galleon group founder taking the stand. closing arguments in the case begin wednesday. jury deliberations start by the end of the week.

still haven't finished your taxes? you have until midnight to get them postmarked. the internal revenue service says it's been a record year for electronic tax returns. more than 100 million have been filed this year. >> susie: a year ago this week, one the nation's worst environmental disasters rocked the gulf of mexico. the explosion at b.p.'s deep water horizon project killed 11 workers and spilled an estimated five million barrels of oil into the gulf. this week we take you back to the region to see how the communities, businesses and residents along the coast are faring one year later. in part one of our series "revitalizing the gulf," diane eastabrook visits gulf shores, alabama, where the tourism industry is still recovering from the spill's black eye. >> reporter: in gulf shores, alabama, spring breakers are enjoying the sun and surf. last year, the b.p. oil spill closed the beaches here and in

nearby orange beach for several weeks. today, while the coast guard remains on the lookout for tar balls, the beaches appear oil free. still, businesses in this resort area say some effects from the spill linger. tourism still hasn't recovered from the environmental disaster. hotel vacancies are up, room rates are down, and some retailers have closed up shop entirely. >> this is great with capris or even like a bathing suit coverup. >> reporter: traci macaro is fighting to keep her boutique, ooh lala, open. she says before the spill tourists flooded her cheap chic clothing store in orange beach. now, they're only trickling in. >> we've had a few good weeks you know, here and there, different spring breaks that have come in, but overall in this particular location we're still down about 50%. >> reporter: for many businesses along the alabama coast, the scarcity of tourists isn't their only problem. they say an even bigger one is getting the gulf coast claims

facility to hand over money from b.p.'s $20 billion compensation fund. >> this is all of the analysis of our sales year over year. >> reporter: chuck smith submitted hundreds of documents to the fund. smith says sales and rentals at his upscale recreational vehicle park went into reverse after the spill. so, last fall he filed a half- million-dollar claim to recover about five months worth of lost revenues. after months of waiting, a check finally arrived-- for $4,000. >> there was no documentation with the check. there was no explanation as to how they derived that amount and for the life of me i can't imagine how you get $4,000 out of a half million. in fact, i paid our accounting firm more than i received in the claim. >> reporter: that was $4,000 more than jason dyken got. the wealth manager who caters to area professionals submitted a claim in the low six figures late last year. a month ago, his claim was

denied. now, he's thinking of suing b.p. because the company promised to make gulf coast residents and businesses whole. >> my costs are all fixed. my revenue is derived from professional services that i provide, so it's pretty simple, straightforward. you just see your gross income go down. if you are doing the same things you've always done in your business, what can you attribute it to if it wasn't the oil spill? >> reporter: while the oil spill has been a financial challenge for gulf shores and its neighbors, the disaster has also brought the resort communities closer together. >> the business support center, the initial round of funding for that came from a department of labor grant... >> reporter: right after the spill, civic leaders formed the coastal resiliency coalition and have been meeting twice a week ever since. they talk about challenges... >> if the money came through montgomery, would it get down here to where it needs to go? >> reporter: ...and opportunities. >> we're trying to tie a nexus between the environment and the economy, because there is one.

>> reporter: the group says in the past several months, it's helped boost local business through promotional events and educational programs. chairman bob higgins thinks this new cooperation may be the one good thing to come out of the spill. >> whenever you have a crisis and people come together to work on that crisis, whether it be on this spill or a hurricane, you end up building new relationships between people and hopefully those relationships stay with you for a long time afterward. >> reporter: business leaders in gulf shores and orange beach are cautiously optimistic about the summer tourist season, still they think it could be a couple of years before the economy here completely recovers from the oil spill. tomorrow we'll head to biloxi, mississippi, where the shrimp industry is trying to get its catch back on america's dinner table. diane eastabrook, "nightly business report," gulf shores, alabama. >> tom: as we just heard, some businesses say their claims to the b.p. compensation fund were denied without explanation. others got checks, but not a reason for the settlement amount.

our darren gersh recently talked with ken feinberg, the administrator of b.p.'s $20 billion fund. darren began by asking if there's a problem with the way the fund pays out claims. >> well, there's a problem. first of all, one problem is the sheer magnitude of the number of claims. we have received in the past nine months 800,000 claims in just ninth months for all over 50 states. so there may be some businesses that rebate getting the type of tailored, individualized treatment they expect. that's a mistake. we try to minimize the number of those. we have taken great steps in the past two months to solve that problem. >> reporter: i know you don't comment on specific claims, but can you give us sort of an example of why somebody who might submit a $500,000 claim would get $4,000 and not much explapgz about that?

why might that happen? >> it will happen. if the $500,000 claim ant provides a tax return that shows they reported $4,000 worth of profit in income. i mean, the big problem i've got in the gulf, between the objective of the claimant in some cases asking for $500,000 and only getting $4,000 is how do you prove that a $500,000 loss tied to the spill? and if you do that, we will pay you and have paid you $500,000. >> reporter: mississippi attorney general jim hood said the gulf coast claims facility, which you run, paid "barely 3% of interim business claims and 9% of individual interim claims for economic damages from the spill." he says that you have "unreasonable demands for documents and you're using those demands for documents as an excuse to turn down claims. >> he can say whatever he wants. i mean, what basis does he have

for saying this? now, it's true that many, many more people have asked for quick payments, no further proof, no further proof required, $5,000 for individuals, $25,000 for businesses. we have opted over-- over 100,000 people have opted for that option because they've either already been adequately compensated by the fund and they're coming back again or they simply cannot prove their damage. >> reporter: officials across the gulf are saying the-- you're too slow and you're using sort of poem who are in dire straits, using pressure on them to get them to file quick claims or not press their claims in court. >> since last november 23, we have received about 300,000 claims, 300,000. we have processed to date over

two-thirds of those claims. we are pushing money out the door. and when anybody, a public official or an elected official or anybody else says to me they you are encouraging people to take a quick payment because you don't want them to take other payments, and you're raising the bar of documentation, what evidence is there of that? that is not true. it is simply posturing. >> reporter: roughly half of the quick claims,aise understand it, you have turned down. what's main reason for turning them down? >> no proof. >> reporter: so they just say, "i have a loss" and there's absolutely no documentation? >> we have about 100,000 claims with no proof whatsoever, just a claim form. and when we say attach your proof of damage, they'll either provide nothing or a fishing license or a photograph of them fishing. that's their proof. now, that's 100,000.

then we have a couple of hundred thousand people that send in check stubs, tax returns, documenting their damage, but, a., they don't always demonstrate that that damage is caused by the oil spill. >> reporter: no good deed goes unpinsed but on the other side people say you've paid out 170,000 quick claims and does that encourage fraud that you're paying out so many claims so quickly? >> well, i mean, i think that fraud is an ever-present problem. we have had about 8,000 suspicious-looking claims, and we probably sent to the criminal fraud division at justice department about 1,000. so we're ever vigilant about fraud. >> reporter: ken feinberg, admin strarcht of the gulf coast claim facility. thank you for your time. >> thank you.

>> tom: stocks took a hit on the u.s. government debt worries, but finished off the worst levels of the day. let's take a look at tonight's "market focus." the major indices saw their biggest drops in a month as investors sold right out of the gate this morning. they sold fast and furious. here is the day's trading of the s&p 500.

here it is, you can see the big fall. the lowest level of the day came just after 11:00 a.m. eastern time. the index climbed back above the 1,300 mark in the late afternoon, cutting back its losses. we also saw oil prices get hit by today's government debt worries. oil fell 2% but remains in an up-trend on this 90-session chart. price has been trying to move higher. it would have to fall below $105 a barrel to drop below its low from last week. that's an area to watch. all this had the energy sector leading the market lower. in the first quarter, the energy sector was the best-performing area of the stock market. investors were quick to take profits. anadarko petroleum topped the losers, falling almost 4%. coal miners consol and peabody each shed about 2.5%. peabody earnings are tomorrow. now another leading sector loser? it was financials. banking, insurance and brokerage stocks were hit. this financial select e.t.f. saw heavier-than-usual volume with this selloff.

to the tune of 1.4%. on this 90-session chart, today's close is just pennies off its march low. banking giant citi reported earnings one penny ahead of estimates before the opening bell this morning. a weaker u.s. dollar helped its overseas operations. as for the stock, lots and lots of volume. it topped the most active list. 755 million shares traded. but from the opening to closing bell, the stock price did not move at all. citi's share price was unchanged. after the close tonight, focus fell on semiconductor maker texas instruments. earnings were a penny lighter than expected. these results include the impact from the japanese earthquake damaging two plants. shares lost a fraction during the session and fell another 2% after the close. the firm saw weaker demand for certain wireless semiconductors. it also dropped its earnings outlook by a nickel per share due to the earthquake. a couple of other chip stocks in light of the texas instruments news. qualcomm bucked the weak market today, but was off 2% after the close when texas instruments mentioned weaker wireless chip demand.

marvell tech shed 4.6% after an analyst downgrade due to supply chain worries from japan. finally, biopharmaceutical firm amarin shot up 95%. it said results for an experimental cholesterol drug show it was effective. look at this big move here, over $17 per share. this pop in november came when it reported good results for the same medicine. and that's tonight's "market focus." >> tom: the competition for advertising dollars and big sports deals could be heating up.

tonight's "beyond the scoreboard" looks at how comcast's purchase of n.b.c. could impact the lucrative world of sports on tv. rick horrow is a sports business analyst and c.e.o. of horrow sports ventures. >> so comcast is now the 51% owner of nbc and has been for. the past quarter or so. some big nbc sports deals come along with this. we'll take a look at a few of them, including the sunday night nfl game. you've got the nhl. you've got the london 2012 summer games, and of course comcast already has versus and the golf channel. so how does all of this impact how nbc goes after sports? >> well, first of all, that $13.5 billion more which was the prices for controlling interest. it also gives them deep pockets for ever other event and a little financial discipline if you believe the rhetoric in all of the articles, they're talking about how they won't go after events unless they make money in and of themselves. we'll believe that when we see it. but at least that's the temp

plate going in. >> tom: it may be hard to reject a big deal even if you can't make money off of it. dr. the new comcast-nbc merger imimpact big marquee sports price tags that come along with it. >> pack 12, pack 10 is a big battle ground for the foxes of the world and espn, ask everybody else. if i know that the deep pockets of comcast are at the table, i may say, yeah, i may go even higher. so competition in this case really does help all of the rights holders. >> tom: let's talk about competition on the other side, which is on the cable side because as i mentioned, it's got the versus cable channel but for better than a generation, disney has owned the space with espn. versus has nhl, indy caricature defrance. espn, monday night football. it has that franchise. it has major league baseball and lots and lots of major colleges. what does comcast and versus need to do to step you want competition? >> buy more stuff. but the bottom line is do it in

a thoughtful way and in a vertically integrated way so it's not just premiere properties but premiere properties that have the ability to go across the regional comcast networks as well as marquee eventses. golf channel, the golf olympics, golf channel. that would be one of those targets. so you've got to host every kind of event on every kind of channel you have. >> tom: comcast is about am programming and distribution. how does this impact others like echo star. >> comcast had a glass ceiling. now there's a lot more capital. competition is good for everybody, no glass ceiling, the money starts flowing. >> tom: comcast's stock has had a nice run-up to the integration of this merger. how should shareholders view future sports deals? >> a little suspicion that espn, and abc the big kid on the block. but a second run like a comcast can view the successings but

also view the failures and see where they're most vulnerable. that's a big deal. >> tom: and it's a big deal for rick horrow, of horrow sports systems. good to see you. >> susie: here's what we're watching for tomorrow: earning season kicks into high gear with quarterly results from goldman sachs, intel, johnson & johnson and yahoo. we'll also see housing starts for march. and our word on the street is "speculation." we'll look at companies poised for higher profits from high gas prices. more fallout from the high price of oil-- general motors is now hiking prices on nearly all its new vehicles, effective may 2. figure on paying about $123 more. g.m. says oil affects the cost of plastic parts and tires. higher steel prices factor into the situation as well. but g.m.'s not the only vehiclemaker in this boat. last month toyota said it was raising prices on most of its new models. >> tom: speaking of new models, volkswagen today rolled out the latest version of its iconic beetle.

this one has a flatter roof, a less rounded shape and a crease down the side. v.w. calls it more upscale. it also has a bigger trunk, a navigation system and better lighting. the bug has been around for 73 years, reinvented several times since then. one thing missing from this new version, though? that built-in flower vase on the dashboard.

finally, a fast food giant will be serving up more than french fires tomorrow. mcdonald's holds its first national hiring day, looking to add 50,000 people to its payroll and that of its franchisees. >> the hiring spree will expand mcdonald's u.s. workforce by about 7%. stretched over all of the mcdonald's in the country, it works out to be 3.5 jobs per restaurant. danitra barnett is vice president of human resources for mcdonald's u.s.a. she says they're looking for summer help and more permanent jobs. >> we hiring restaurant employees. we're hiring crew people. we're hiring managers. there's even maintenance-type positions available, so if we have moms, dads, teenagers, older workers-- we have opportunities for all types of folks who feel mcdonald's is the right fit for them. >> reporter: the effort to collect job applications for 50,000 openings in one day is

the result of a smaller effort last year. the company posted 13,000 jobs in its western u.s. region and 60,000 people applied. c.e.o. of staffing firm s.f.n. roy krauser thinks the successful job candidate will show mcdonald's they want to stick around and climb the ladder. >> i think one of the concerns i would have would be over-hiring. "i'm going to hire these people. they're over-skilled. they look really good. i'm going to take them in. they're going to be really fantastic for me, but are they going to stay?" >> tom: the hiring spree won't make a big difference in the monthly employment data for april. that's because the information already has been collected. if you're thinking of applying, the average pay for the jobs is reportedly $8.30 an hour, or about $17,000 per year. >> susie: that's "nightly business report" for monday, april 18. i'm susie gharib. good night everyone, and good night to you too, tom. >> tom: good night susie. i'm tom hudson. good night everyone. we hope to see all of you again tomorrow night.

"nightly business report" is made possible by: this program was made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. captioning sponsored by wpbt captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> be more.