Bill this market is nothing like it would be if we had a decent employment base. Yes we got a good market last year and a sort of so so one this year but that was only after the mother of all bears in 00/01/02 which I KNOW you are aware of!
Truth be told, given where we are in this economy for tech, where the companies are and their profitability I actually think the nasdaq is *undervalued*. The reason I think this is because with the dearth of hiring weighing on capex we still are managing great profitability. If we had hiring, and the revenue growth that comes with it, plus the additional liquidity that more workers mean in the stock market, we'd be WAY ABOVE 2000.
I know reagan had deficits but I want a clinton market back, don't you? Why settle for the 80s, when we were losing the battle with Japan? Who are we losing to now anyway? Don't answer I already know- China. But the difference is that this time we are engineering our own demise with China. If we actually took care of our industries and our workforce to the degree that some of these other nations do then we wouldn't have these deficits or a dollar crash. And I'm not talking about xenophobic Japan either. I'm talking about something as common sensical as *NOT* awarding $100mm government R&D grants to companies that do their R&D offshore. It looks like China is wrestling the chip industry away from Intel now btw. Gee how'd they learn how to build chips over there anyway?
As an analogy to what the US economy is allowing free trade status to do to us, I have an idea. Lets start a nafta with Japan, called "Japta". We will go over there and "partner" with Honda to build robots, but we will create our own robotic standard which is slightly different, very slight from the japanese standard. Then, we will cut all taxes on our workforce for workers that work for japanese companies offshore while at the same time artificially lowering our currency. Japan then naively sends its IP to our shores and voila! Instant industry. As soon as we create the industry we immediately close the market. Meanwhile economists offshore will be chanting that this ripoff of Japanese IP is actually a *good thing* that has happened to the japanese economy, while the japanese robotic workers who are the best in the world can get jobs at fast food outlets. |
