Hello Jay,
Fidelity fired a bunch of folks who are no longer needed to man the phones,
True, but other day I was watching a show of panel of economists on PBS and they also discussed about people getting laid off. And the question was what to do? The answer to that is to leave them to market forces or let the govt. or company accept responsibility about retraining and re-deploying them.
I don't know what path a capitalist society should take?
You weren’t allowed to keep checking portfolio while working, and now you do,
I don't think so. You are allowed to do something related to personal work provided it is not that distractive to company's goal. I have spoken to even my director about it and he has agreed to it.
Fidelity wins, and some other brokerage loses,
That what competition is about and that's what keep companies stay lean and competitive.
Case in point is rise of Cisco and fall of Bay Networks. I don't think this hurt the networking industry growth. On the contrary it gave the world best routers that a human mind could invent.
and the paper mills need fewer workers, in order to compete against other paper mills,
I think I already covered this one.
Productivity is definitely improved, along with efficiency, but not to the extent of allowing equity risk premium to approach that of AAA grade bonds, and not to the extent of underpinning market cap at 135% of GDP (now) or higher (before).
At least a smart guy like you agreed on productivity improvement. But now you are attaching a risk premium to it.
Equity by there very nature have inherent risk and so will be never approach the quality of grade bonds.
I agree with you regarding market cap at 135% of GDP (now) or higher. It certainly should have not gone that far in the first place.
Keep in mind that overall corporate economic profit actually went down, even as reported profit zipped up.
Correct me if I am wrong. But overall corporate economic profit actually goes down temporarily but not so in the long run.
Market valuation ought to have some connection with true profit and real free cash flow.
Well now after what has happened, Wall street mafia have realized that and will most likely cover companies that have path to profitability in real sense.
No wonder now a days the commercials on TV by brokers and mutual funds only talk about investing in bonds.
Productivity and efficiency is good for monopolies,
Should govt. nationalize the Microsoft and Ciscos of worlds.
It did not work out in Russia.
Even India is trying to de-nationalize some of the industries that it nationalized previously.
but terrible for sub-sections of globalized economy.
Globalization helps and hurts. Now I am not sure which way it works more.
Internet is ultimately deflationary.
It benefits few and does not benefit most. So what do we to fight this ultimate deflation, the monstrous side-effect of internet.
In fact Micheal Burke whose posts I used to read did mention about this back in 1997 and looks like he was right on the money.
We need a follow-up to the abracadabra, and none is in view yet.
Now I did not get this part of follow-up to abracadabra
Regards,
marginnayan |
