My response to your post follows below.
First a semi news blip:
January 28, 2003...Breinigsville's Back! TriQuint Semiconductor has positioned its new optoelectronics business unit, which it acquired from Agere. The operation will be called TriQuint Optoelectronics and will be headed by Glen Riley. Glen's base of operations will be in the former Lucent/Agere MOCVD stronghold of Breinigsville, Pennsylvania USA. Operations include Matamoros, Mexico and total 340 employees. Stay tuned for more details in our next issue, later this week, some of which are in TriQuint's company news release, below. And in another breaking story we're tracking... it looks like there's a new player in the blue laser arena. New Focus announced late yesterday (see company news release, below) that they're expanding beyond tunable lasers and will be offering compact, solid state fixed-wavelength lasers in violet (405 nm), blue (475 nm), green (532 nm), and in the red spectrum (635 nm).
I disagree that the troubles are imagined. While fear is playing it's part in the difficulties we see, I don't believe that the economic troubles are a fantasy. Unemployment is much higher than it was a few years ago. Most of the businesses that I come into contact with are saying that their revenues are down, on average, about 10 to 15%. One look at the airline/hotel/and all the associated industries, shows severe weakness. This softness trickles down throughout many other service industries. I'm not saying that "we're doomed" or anything like that! I'm just saying that the level of economic activity in a substantial segment of the overall economy is very weak, with little hope of substantial improvement over the short haul. So much so that I strongly question those who pound the table to buy the stock market at this point. |
