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To: Eric Wells who wrote (80149)	10/10/1999 11:35:00 PM
From: 10K a day	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Eric, I don't know specifics of Washington State Employee payroll stuff, but (In California) classifying payroll under 'internal marketing ' can save (as percent of total wages): 3.5 percent on Unemployment Insurance, 7.51 percent on FICA, 3--> 25 percent on State Compensation Insurance, and basically you can have "internal marketing contractors" sign a contract, tell them to work their own hours, but give them a schedule anyway, tell them this is the job, and they need to provide their own Worker's compensation insurance, In California The worker's compensation alone can eat you alive especially in certain Highly Physical Less Skilled Job Classifications,,,,, (California Workers' Compensation Insurance is a Cancer)

To: Eric Wells who wrote (80149)	10/11/1999 1:45:00 AM
From: dbblg	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

>>How long until investors scrutinize earnings at this level of detail? Investors already do. The pension issue has been kicked around for several quarters; it played some role in my decision to short GE last year. (I lost money. This was last fall, when I was short GE, MER, IBM, and CSCO and was also prone to talking trash about motherhood and apple pie. -g-) GE is the market; it goes up and down based on overall liquidity, not its fundamentals. I think it is overvalued (and remember, I'm the guy who thinks YHOO is undervalued!) but I'm not about to mess with it again.

To: Eric Wells who wrote (80149)	10/11/1999 5:19:00 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 164684

Eric: I must confess, I did not think to check GE's books -- perhaps the truth is that we have all taken less care and paid less attention to analysis and relied more on an unhealthy form of 'faith' in a stock to determine investment values in the current market. When somebody says "you don't get it" perhaps they mean is "you are not a believer". This is a stock market, not a religion. Healthy scepticism is what is needed.

To: Eric Wells who wrote (80149)	10/12/1999 2:31:00 AM
From: dbblg	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

OT Eric, I finally saw the Abelson piece in Barron's. His "friend" is talking about a different pension issue than I had (sloppily) assumed he was. In any case, I think it is even less significant than I originally thought. Among other things, the amount of pension overfunding brought into income (I'm pretty sure that's not the right terminology, but you know what I mean, right?) in 1997 was especially low because of a layoff/early retirement charge. I don't think the jump from 97 to 98 is cause for concern any more than I thought the decline from 96 to 97 was cause for jubilation. I suppose there's a bigger issue about the proper role for accounting-earnings in evaluating a business, but I'm sleepy enough without discussing accounting... Incidentally, someone sent me e-mail mentioning a company response to the Barron's piece, but I haven't seen it.