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To: Les H who wrote (44011)	3/24/2000 2:27:00 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99985

SALOMON ECONOMIST SAYS MARCH US PAYROLLS COULD JUMP 625,000 09:55 EST 03/24 --Other Payroll Estimates Also Coming in Over 300,000 By Joseph Plocek WASHINGTON (MktNews) - Salomon Smith Barney estimates U.S. March payrolls could post an outsized gain of 625,000, more than making up for the anemic growth of just 43,000 jobs in February. SSB economist Chris Weegan confirmed to Market News International that the firm sees several factors boosting payrolls to a gain of +625,000 in March. The reasons include a 140,000 jump in census workers hired by the federal government, a bounceback from the small February payroll gain, a good +75,000 gain in manufacturing jobs as compared to their recent movements in the 10,000 to 15,000 area, and the unusually long 5-week survey period. Even if March payrolls should be read in the context of a still strong economy, he said, as companies fretfully search for qualified workers. Most other shops have preliminary March payroll estimates in the +300,000s.

To: Les H who wrote (44011)	3/24/2000 3:33:00 PM
From: Fun-da-Mental#1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99985

Global Thermoelectric (T.GLE) ran a solid-oxide fuel cell on gasoline a couple of months ago. Fun-da-Mental (P.S. Am I a contrarian indicator or what?!)

To: Les H who wrote (44011)	3/24/2000 4:27:00 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99985

U.S. Treasury moves keeping lid on mortgage rates By Richard Leong NEW YORK, March 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department, unwittingly or through bad timing, may be undermining the Federal Reserve by keeping a lid on mortgage rates at a time the Fed is trying to push up rates to cool the economy, analysts said. While the Fed has been steadily raising the rates it charges in the money markets, the Treasury Department has limited the central bank's impact on mortgages through a debt buyback program and an official's remarks about federally chartered housing agencies that roiled bond markets. ``The timing is unfortunate,' said Gary Schlossberg, senior economist at Wells Capital Management in San Francisco. ``It's blunting the rise in interest rates. It's insulating the interest rate sensitive sectors,' Schlossberg said. Bankers base their mortgage rates on Treasury debt securities, whose yields have been falling rather than going up, at least in part due to the buyback program and comments this week by Treasury Under Secretary Gary Gensler that undermined investor confidence in housing agencies Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank system. The housing market is particularly sensitive to changes in interest rates. The Fed last increased rates on Tuesday, for the fifth time since June 1999, boosting the key federal funds rate on overnight loans to banks by a quarter percentage point to 6.00 percent. Mortgage rates, meanwhile, though they are about 1.25 percentage points higher than a year ago, have not done much so far to rein in housing demand. While home sales have slowed from last year's record pace, analysts said consumers have only slightly pared back their housing appetite. ``Housing demand is softening,' said Jim O'Sullivan, economist at J.P. Morgan Securities in New York. ``But the weakening is not that great.' According to the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, overall requests for mortgages were flat for the week ended March 17 and off 25 percent from a year ago. But mortgage applications to buy homes rose 0.9 percent last week and climbed 13 percent from the same year-earlier period. Soaring rents have contributed to the home-buying trend by making renting more costly than buying, analysts said. Rents have gone up 3.2 percent since February 1999 while the cost of owning a home has increased 2.5 percent, according to the Labor Department. <<<har de har har har>>> If stock prices keep going up, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages may have to go up three-quarters of a percentage point for housing to slow down further, O'Sullivan said. ``If the stock market stays strong, you may have to see mortgage rates go to 9 percent,' he said. Mortgage rates, which had moved higher in step with Fed rate hikes in the past, topped out in mid-February when the Treasury Department detailed its plans to buy back up to $30 billion of old government debt in order to lower its cost of borrowing. Fears about a shrinkage in the supply of government debt sparked a rally in medium- and long-term Treasury securities, sending their prices higher and their yields lower, as bond yields move in the opposite direction of prices. According to Freddie Mac, a leading financer of home loans, 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rates averaged 8.23 percent for the week ended March 24 after peaking six weeks ago at 8.38 percent, their loftiest levels since July 1996. Then, on Wednesday, Gensler pushed medium- and long-term Treasury yields even lower by backing a proposal in Congress that would end $9 billion in credit lines for the three federally-sponsored housing agencies. The credit lines now enjoyed by Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM - news), Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE - news) and the Federal Home Loan banks have long been viewed by investors as an implicit government guarantee on the bonds issued by those agencies. Gensler's comments triggered concerns among investors about the credit quality of bonds issued by the three agencies, which have gained in status recently due to the expected decline in supply of Treasury debt.