Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (7635)	10/1/1999 10:54:00 PM
From: Rational	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 12475

gives the US all the more justification to intervene, and get a toehold and then a foothold, and finally a stranglehold. This was the old British evil policy advice to Americans since 1950. The British even dreamed to revive it in May 1998, but had to recoil due their worry that they could not spoil the Indian capital markets via sanctions. The stock market is up more than 50%. The smartest operators of Wall Street are considering the British advice as total insanity, counter to American interests. India will never ever allow an American/British soldier land in Kashmir; and has rebuffed the Anglo-American policy makers whenever they uttered the K-word. Now, Clinton says he does not want to enter the bilateral negotiation between Pakistan and India because he knows India will not let him in the discussion, let alone in any military involvement. Your understanding of the geopolitical reality in the Indian subcontinent seems totally outdated.

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (7635)	10/3/1999 11:46:00 AM
From: JPR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

DIPY: Your input is appreciated. PARIS -- A political cartoon here last week showed France's Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, getting ready to meet a roomful of reporters. Behind a closed door, Jospin -- sweating with effort -- was repeating to himself: "I am from the Left. I am from the Left. I am from the Left." Since he declared two weeks ago that the government "could not be expected to control the economy," Jospin has been under heavy pressure to take back his words. The prime minister owes his position to a coalition of Greens, Communists and Socialists, who do not take kindly to that kind of talk. Members of the coalition tagged the remark "pro-business" and suggested that Jospin might lose their support. Jospin did not disappoint. Last week he soothed his restive coalition with a bevy of new measures aimed at making the government's weight felt. With unemployment still over 11 percent here, he proposed penalizing companies that use too many temporary employees and denying state aid to profitable firms that cut their work force, among other measures. His announcement, to a special meeting of Socialist lawmakers from all over Europe, marked an apparent U-turn for the prime minister, who despite his left-wing roots has generally taken a pragmatic approach, quietly going forward, for instance, with privatization. "The market economy does not spontaneously work in harmony," Jospin told a cheering crowd at the lawmakers' meeting. "It needs ground rules to function effectively." His new proposals appeared to be a return to the use of greater government regulations to try to solve the problems of the economy -- and, some say, the opening efforts of his eventual run for the presidency in 2002. Jospin first got in trouble responding to questions about what has become known here as the "Michelin affair." The French tire company, which employs virtually the whole city of Clermont-Ferrand, recently announced a 10 percent cut in its work force at the same time as it announced nearly 20 percent growth in its profits. The announcement sent the company's stock soaring but infuriated much of France, whose economy is beginning to climb out of years of lifelessness but still has not managed to create many jobs. Asked about Michelin's announcements, Jospin encouraged workers to demonstrate but said there was little the government could do. "The economy can not run by legislation and official texts," he said then. "People must stop expecting the government and the state to take charge of everything." Within days, Communist Party leader Robert Hue responded that Jospin risked losing his government majority with such pro-business views. Jospin's speech to the lawmakers appears to have appeased Hue though. Soon after, he was quoted in the Communist daily L'Humanite as having said that the prime minister appeared to have learned his lesson. But whether the measures Jospin proposed will ever materialize is unclear. He offered few details and many analysts suggested that he was simply playing a good game of politics. Jospin has not been alone in trying to shore up his support base in advance of a run for the presidency. President Jacques Chirac, who began his current seven-year term in 1995, recently took steps to shore up his sagging Gaullist party, the Rally for the Republic. The move seems to have backfired, with the party appearing only more divided than before. Rather than rallying around Chirac's choice to head the party, more and more members are trying to get the job for themselves. The list of candidates grows longer by the day. Already more than half a dozen aspirants have stepped forward. Chirac's party has never fully recovered from the debacle of 1997 when Chirac called an early parliamentary election expecting to win easily. Instead, his party lost control of the legislature, leaving Chirac to work with a Socialist prime minister. But Chirac remains enormously popular. The latest political poll, published in Le Figaro Magazine on Friday, gave him a 56 percent approval rating. Jospin, more the cool intellectual, is also well liked. In the Figaro poll, he beat Chirac with a 64 percent approval rating.