****** BUXXXX **** OTOTOTOT *******
the process is great IF WE LEAVE ENOUGH $$$$ BEHIND to increase global demand, the process backfires if the vietnamese shoe worker can't afford nikes, the korean chip worker carn't afford to buy a PC, or if a chinese rice grower, a brazilian coffee grower, a russian gold miner can't afford to eat. We live in dangerous times, to live above our means we have greedily pushed whole peoples into working poverty. The pity is that reasonable capitalistic expansion has been affored us by productivity growth. My point is not that capitalism doesn't work, it has been proven to work above any modern organisation of man, but that we have stretched profit too far for our own good, and now the rest of the world is too burdened by its debts to us, and we are faced with the fact that a recession in Japan, has become a recession throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And has begun to effect Eastern Europe, and all the cheap labor countries of the world, and is and will bite us back harder.
I am extremely pessimistic about the chances for continued economic growth in the short to medium term --- in fact a depression would not surprise me, and I have made provisions for it. We have binged on appliances, cars, drugs etc (just look at Maytag's announcement today). And very few other peoples can afford them, we are in fact in a pretty similar economic state as a world as we were before the two world wars. The only markets to conquer are each other's, as there is so little wealth anywhere else. The important difference is that the US is now the only real power and that war with it would be suicidal, but the threat of gradual destabilisation is there.
on AMAT I think the thread view that these stocks are cheap, will not be supported by fact. Having predicted the 4Q loss way early, I stick to my view of $250 million capex write-off, and further restructuring in 1Q '99. I continue to think the markets will take it on the chin, and that many market have further to fall. Pricing is soooo subjective but I'm looking to start on the next terrible day and then all the way down to 12 or perhaps 15.
Hey, it's just one man's opnion on sport..... and vey much mine |
