Barry, re: Staggering? Not for the faint-hearted, it's long. gg.
Well, first off let me tell you that when I got John's post I thought I was on the other thread and I guess you know how we talk there. gg. Maybe here I should have said: Disturbing? and it was very late when I read all this stuff.
Ok, what had changed? Well, practically all the Asian markets looked red. And then the Indonesian currency had plunged again greatly. It is now devalued about 80% against the dollar. I don't think that is grave but it certainly had not gotten any better. It has only 20% to go and at one point, even I concede, this cannot be too good especially if all this spreads. It has practically already spread all over Asia.
At this point I had figured that Europe is going to help the bottom line of our cos. but if all this spreads to Eastern Europe it will affect their measly comeback. Their banks are a little bit more involved in Asia than ours, their trade not as much as ours but if Eastern Europe gets affected the Western European trade will be affected and it could not help them in their effort to go ahead with getting their economy more up to snuff, which in turn - as I already mentioned - helps our cos. to make up the slack of Asian trade. I have
advocated the musical chairs theory but if all the chairs are getting removed it will be hard to take turns. gg.
The links on the post I received were not too encouraging either.
And then I posted those articles and I thought that could be "staggering". I don't know, people jumping off roofs, talking about suicide and some actually committing it because of losses in the market, sounded staggering to me that late at night. It looked like a "mini 1929" in HK. When people lose faith because of economic situations to that degree it could make you look at 1929. It started out in one place and spread. Im not advocating this, I just thought things last night or early this morning looked worse.
All this devaluation of money has to hurt our economy at one point if it keeps up. Let's not talk about all the earnings warnings which came out already, let's just talk about MU. They said Asia is hurting them to a point where they have an empty factory and 3000 jobs are in jeopardy. (American jobs) (Don't quote me on the exact wording.) Those devaluated currencies could play havoc with our economy. The trade deficit could get a lot bigger. I guess you know what that means? Asian Governments are subsidizing their industries, especially in the Semi Cond. Industry. They are getting in trouble and the IMF has to bail them out. Not a pretty picture. MU does not like that bailout, I don't like that bailout either, but maybe some of it has to be done in order for things not to snowball. I am not sure where all the answers lie but all those articles just made things look more "staggering" to me.
I feel a little better today, now that Msft partially settled with the GVT. Maybe it helps the outlook for our companies. If the world economies straighten out it will be helpful to Intel and in turn to us. I am with you though in the belief that when those Asian economies are cleansed it will be a positive in the end.
But in any event, I was happy with my CPQ. gg.
Sonny
P.S. Shall we put the Presidents problems to all of the above? |
