Ted Williams spent 17 hard years on the streets before becoming an online sensation last year. By Scott Stump TODAY.com contributor
Even after a viral YouTube video helped turn him from a homeless crack addict to a media sensation, golden-voiced former radio announcer Ted Williams admitted Monday his struggles were far from over.
Amid emotional moments of his remarkable journey last year, such as his tearful reunion with his mother in a segment on TODAY, he admitted he relapsed on alcohol and drugs twice, including leaving a treatment facility after less than two weeks.
Now claiming to be clean and sober for more than a year and surrounded by good people, Williams, 54, has cowritten a book with Brett Witter called "A Golden Voice.” The book details how he went from being a popular Ohio DJ to a homeless crack addict to a YouTube sensation after 17 hard years on the streets. He related the ups and downs of his life to Matt Lauer, in the mellifluous tones of the memorable voice that gained millions of fans when it was heard via YouTube in January 2011.
‘I never stopped praying’ “All through that journey, I never stopped praying,’’ Williams said. “I never lost hope. I would ask God, ‘Please, let my mother and myself stay alive one more year. Lord, please, let a life-changing turnaround happen in my life so that my mother would not close her eyes saying, ‘I did a bad job raising this child.’’’
Williams was forthcoming about his struggles since first appearing on TODAY in January 2011, when he was awestruck by his overnight rise to popularity after years of living on the streets. He voluntarily entered rehab that month after taping television segments with Dr. Phil, only to leave less than two weeks later amid allegations by his family members that he was drinking daily while living in California.
“I figured since it wasn’t my drug of choice, alcohol could be my new drug,’’ Williams said. “I could go and start drinking, and nobody would know. Everybody would know (if) Ted was on crack, but they wouldn’t know that Ted was drinking.’’
After emerging from his second stint in rehab, Williams celebrated his one-year anniversary of sobriety this month by walking his daughter down the aisle at her wedding on May 4.
"I was able to be a part of that, something that a year and a half ago I wouldn’t have even thought about, let alone become a part of,’’ he said.
From No. 1 to homeless During the 1980s, Williams was the No. 1 drive-time DJ in Columbus, Ohio, but addictions to crack cocaine and alcohol cost him his job and his family. From 1993 through 2010, he was homeless in Columbus, begging for money on the street while often giving passing motorists samples of his still smooth, deep voice.
Williams chronicles his hard times in bleak detail in his book, describing his delinquent parenting, his dishonesty with his mother, and even prostituting his girlfriend to support his habit. Despite everything that has happened, he and his girlfriend are still together.
“We’re doing well,’’ he said. “One day at a time. This new domesticated life is really wild.’’
In December 2010, Williams was panhandling off Interstate 71 in Columbus with a sign that read, "I’m an ex-radio announcer who has fallen on hard times,’’ when he caught the eye of Columbus Dispatch videographer Doral Chenoweth III. He shot a video of Williams doing a silky voice-over and it went viral, with more than 20 million views on YouTube. Williams was soon appearing on the couches of several late-night talk show hosts as well as the set of TODAY as the latest online sensation.
Williams had been obsessed with becoming a radio voice since his mother bought him a radio when he was 10 years old. He enlisted in the Army after his high school graduation and was eventually dishonorably discharged for black-marketing electronic equipment. He pursued his radio dream by getting a job as a DJ at a station in Chadbourn, N.C., before moving on to Columbus and becoming a local celebrity.
However, he began smoking crack daily and watched as his job and family evaporated because of his addiction. After 17 long years on the streets, he said, he began hearing the voice of God in 2010, urging him to change his life.
"I would literally throw stuff on the ground as litter and that voice would say, ‘I didn’t create this world to look nasty,’ and I would actually walk back as far as quarter-mile to go pick that up and throw it in the trash can,’’ he told Lauer.
Now clean-cut and sober, Williams admitted that it is still an everyday struggle to keep a lid on his addiction. However, he remains optimistic about the future, joking with Lauer that when he returns to TODAY in five years, he will be behind the wheel of a luxury vehicle.
"I want an Escalade bad,’’ he said. "I don’t know if I’m promoting Cadillac right now, but I do want one. My attorney, Bret Adams, said, ‘You keep doing the right thing, I’ll get that Escalade in the driveway.’’’
Equity stock market declines continuously for the week. Trading volume increases as traders contribute to significant portion of market activity. Overall market participation remains low because investors are uncomfortable to hold stocks. Since cash level is high, any dip will attract some bargain buyers. Due to low confidence, investors will also take quick profit on any rebound.
Traders and market manipulators successfully drag down the market when some investors begin to worry about the outlook and realize the gain from previous purchase. European sovereign debt looms to raise market fear. Although investors would not sell in a panic again as in last year, there is growing concern of a sizable pullback. A rush to take profit has started among some investors.
Market is currently a struggle between speculators and investors. Traders use economic crisis to create turbulence in the market to make profit. On the other hand, investors are holding large amount of cash and bought up stocks near the bottom. There is fear to reduce portfolio stock holding while there is still profit. The European sovereign debt crisis can be used as a trigger for market collapse. Currently there is no symptom of big drop although market participants are gradually losing confidence. Probability of panic selling is not high because active market participants have high cash level and do not have much incentive to sell. Market now appears to be finding support for weak investor confidence. Market movement is indication of market participants behaviour, not necessarily indicates contemporary economic environment while household investors mostly remain outside of equity stock market.
Stock Trading Is Still Falling After ’08 Crisis Even though American stocks have doubled in price in the last three years, investors and traders large and small keep giving the market the cold shoulder.
Trading in the United States stock market has not only failed to recover since the 2008 financial crisis, it has continued to fall. In April, the average daily trades in American stocks on all exchanges stood at nearly half of its peak in 2008: 6.5 billion compared with 12.1 billion, according to Credit Suisse Trading Strategy.
The decline stands in marked contrast to past economic recoveries, when Americans regained their taste for stock trading within two years of economic shocks in 1987 and 2001.
The decline in trading has not sent the prices of stocks down. Though there is less buying and selling, the people who have remained in the market are willing to pay higher prices, driving the value of the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index up 102 percent since the market hit a bottom in the spring of 2009.
Among retail investors, the most reliable source of trading volume has been the day traders who were given access to cheaper trading by discount brokers like E*Trade and TD Ameritrade.
Steve Quirk, a senior vice president at TD Ameritrade, said these investors were still scarred by the financial crisis in 2008-9, which followed the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2001. More recently, share prices have steadily risen but with jarring short-term reversals.
•The 2008 credit crisis and 2000 bursting of the tech bubble scarred a generation of investors, some irreparably. •The "Flash Crash" of May 2010 spooked many investors who feel the market is rigged, or at least manipulated by high-frequency computer trading. •High unemployment, stagnant wages and the bursting of the housing bubble have left millions of Americans with little or no funds to put in the market, even if they were so inclined. In 2011, 46.4% of U.S. households owned stocks, down from 59.4% in 2001, according to USA Today. •Government bailouts of Wall Street and the Fed's ongoing zero interest rate policy have eroded investors' faith in the market and the sustainability of any rally. •Lack of faith in policymakers here and abroad, especially Europe, has many investors braced for another market meltdown. Add it up and many investors would prefer to keep their assets in cash or the presumed safety of the bond market. Since the end of 2008, more than $260 billion have been pulled from U.S. equity mutual funds while $800 billion have gone into bond funds, USA Today reports, citing data from the Investment Company Institute.
Gauging when psychology will turn or what will trigger renewed ardor for stocks is impossible to predict. But statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests investor sentiment can't get a whole lot worse, which is historically a good time for true long-term investment.
Where Manufacturing Is Gaining After hemorrhaging jobs during the recession - and over the last decade, for that matter - manufacturing has been one of the few bright spots of the recovery, restoring 489,000 jobs since the beginning of 2010.
But there have been some significant geographic distinctions in that recovery, as well as some toppled assumptions, one of which is that factory jobs have steadily shifted from the Midwest to the South.
Mr. Wial said that there was some evidence that manufacturing could make more of a comeback in the United States because labor costs are rising in developing countries and "many large companies are starting to reconsider the costs and benefits of offshoring."
Hedge Funds Profit as J.P. Morgan Sees Losses For a group of hedge funds and other traders, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s sudden $2.3 billion trading loss means big profits, according to people familiar with the matter.
Firms such as BlueMountain Capital Management LLC and BlueCrest Capital Management LP each scored gains of about $30 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Representatives for the firms declined to comment.
One trader elsewhere estimated that well more than a dozen firms, including his, as well as traders at banks also profited by taking the other side of J.P. Morgan’s trades.
The moves show that on Wall Street, traders are inevitably at the ready to take the other side of a big position in the expectation it goes awry.
Equity stock market retreats on waves of economics data. As market participants are worry of significant pullback after the strong rally, there are few aggressive buyers. Investors with higher exposure on equity stocks begin to take profit and increase cash level. Investors with plenty of cash are waiting for market signal.
Market manipulators see a pessimistic outlook from speculators. There is a large decline on the last trading day of week. Traders are very cautious of further decline and rush to close holding positions regardless of profit or loss. Institutional and individual investors are relatively calm since portfolio has high cash level.
Since recent market top, capital money is slowly flowing out of the equity stock market as market participants do not have confidence in stock performance. Household investors do not want to be the last to exit in case of a market collapse. On the other hand, wealthy investors are less worry of market collapse and continue to hold blue-chip stocks that can provide decent dividend return. This provides support to general market despite trader speculation and negligence from individual investors.
“Weakness and Turmoil” Are Good for Stocks: David Kotok "The market looks at weakness and turmoil and says 'more LTRO or something like it in Europe...the Fed on hold [and] will stretch it out longer,'" explains David Kotok, chairman and CIO of Cumberland Advisors. "Every time there's a shock, it means there will be more global QE. That's what markets celebrate."
"There's an argument in favor of a repeat [of 2010 and 2011] but we don't agree with it," says Kotok.
He sees instead a continuation of slow growth, low inflation and low interest rates, a highly accommodative Fed and strong corporate profits. That environment "can go on for several years" and is potentially very bullish for stocks, says Kotok.
"Bear markets set the stage for the ensuing bull market," Kotok says, suggesting the stage is set for yet more gains to come.
Reasons To Be Optimistic About America The Daily Ticker headed to Los Angeles this week to cover the Milken Institute's annual Global Conference where many of the world's most influential investors, economists, CEOs, innovators and policymakers met to discuss some of the most imminent and dire problems facing America and the world.
Niall Ferguson Professor, Harvard University "The thing that makes me optimistic about the United States is technology and the ability of the United States still to be at the cutting edge. But of course that is quite geographically localized. That is a Silicon Valley story."
Mitch Daniels Governor, Indiana "The resilience of the American economy over time. We still give birth to more new businesses than other places [and] that we still have a core of innovation."
Richard Fisher Dallas Federal Reserve President "We are growing our population. We have an enormous Hispanic population that's coming in. We are still the magnet for anybody that wants to work hard in the world. And we create, and we innovate, and we are masters of creative destruction. As long as government won't interfere with that adjustment, and let the American genius go to work, we'll win."
U.S. Chose Better Path to Recovery Last summer, things looked bad on both sides of the Atlantic. There were fears of double-dip recessions, and stubbornly high unemployment rates. Stock markets swooned.
In Europe this week, a meeting of finance ministers trying to negotiate details of how banks will be forced to raise capital — and whether some countries can require their banks to have more capital — produced no agreement but provided more reasons to doubt whether the banks are safe. In the United States, the Federal Reserve’s quarterly survey of lending officers indicated that lending conditions were improving.
No one factor made the difference in the divergent paths the two continents have taken. But there are two — both related to financial conditions — that were very important. In each case, it appears that the United States did a much better job.
The first one concerns the banks. The huge bailouts, started in the administration of George W. Bush and continued by President Obama, worked. The banks were bailed out, and the survivors were forced to recapitalize.
The other area where American policy seems to have worked better is monetary policy. The Federal Reserve’s purchase of large amounts of securities — known to some as quantitative easing — was critical in restoring liquidity to American banks and making it possible for them to continue lending. The European Central Bank avoided disaster with its own program to pump cash into banks but, as two Morgan Stanley economists, Joachim Fels and Elga Bartsch, noted this week, that move was “not a circuit breaker that transferred risk from the private sector to the central bank’s balance sheet.” It has bought time, but fundamental problems remain.
Perhaps such fears are inevitable after a financial crisis. But as of now, there can be little doubt that the American government handled the problems of the last year far better than did its European counterparts.
