Hope everyone who has cable will watch the AOL piece tonight at 7 EST on CNBC. Steve Case will be on. Maybe whatever he says can counterbalance Alan "I will kill this strong economy yet" Greenspan.
Concerning the economy, whether it is going up or down in the near term, the fact remains that the baby boomers are entering their peak earning years, as noted by Dent in his "Roaring 2000's." This means there is a heck of a lot of money out there, and it has to go somewhere. A lot of it is going into college expenses, but that amount declines as the boomer's kids finish college. The real estate market peaked years ago, when the boomers bought big expensive homes. And boomers need to save for retirement. So that leaves CDs, MM funds, bonds, or stocks. Recently a lot of this money has been parked in MM funds. It will not take a financial genius to figure out that 3%, 4%, or 5% is not going to hack it for retirement, even at low inflation rates. Especially when stocks have traditionally returned 10% or so. And the only one who likes bonds is Greenspan, since that is the only thing he is allowed to invest in (the man is a zillionaire, BTW). So I expect that this bull market is going to last for many more years, even if we have corrections and even a mini-bear like last October. So in the long term, growth companies like AOL is the place to be. |
