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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (66642)	8/23/1999 11:15:00 AM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

MB - (It is still the situation portrayed in "The Trouble With Computers" by Landauer. IT is everywhere except in the productivity numbers. IT has been the worst productivity enhancing investment in the history of US industry. Hopefully things will get better, but they are not moving toward the better, they are moving toward worse. With one exception. The lower prices of IT are perhaps leaving more budget room for better capital investments.) In a free market, competition drives all profit levels down towards risk-free interest rates. Larger profits are normally transient events. When some companies make errors, their competitors are even further impacted until their excess inventories are sopped up. Computers may help the first adopters, and may reduce the magnitude of inventory cycles, but soon become just another competitive requirement, not a magic bullet. Any initial productivity advantage will be competed away as lower final product prices ensue. Other opinions welcome. Regards, Don

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (66642)	8/23/1999 1:34:00 PM
From: Mike M2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Mike, in addition many employees follow the stock market closely at work and even post on SI - it doesn't help the company's productivity -g- . My Debt and Delusion book from amazon -UK just came in the mail that was fast! ho ho ho mike

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (66642)	8/23/1999 3:39:00 PM
From: Nine_USA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Mr Burke, Can you tell me if brokerage firms are pernitted to loan out shares which are held in IRA accounts in order for them to be used by others for short selling? It was my impression that this was NOT permitted.

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (66642)	8/23/1999 10:10:00 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

IT productivity is pure cr*p. I spent the better part of a day with a piece of software (most expensive peice of SW our company has ever considered purchasing BTW) just trying to prepare an input file that it wouldn't puke on. I'll probably be able to do some things that I couldn't before when I finally get it working, but the idea that SW takes over the mundane tasks so we can really think belongs with the mythical 3 or 4 day work week we were all promised some years ago ... MSFT stuff is probably close to being the worst at making a guy jump through hoops to do the simplest data manipulation. I complained to a guy in IT that I needed something better, more powerful and you know what he told me -- "well, if you require something that can't be done with the office apps perhaps it is a job for us down here." He he he ho ho ho ha ha ha ... ;-)