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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (680)	6/25/2000 2:10:00 PM
From: re3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

he ends it : Let's leave the pessimism to certain precincts in Northeastern university towns. Much better to keep the faith. Faith is always the spirit. gag me with a spoon...

To: Les H who wrote (680)	6/25/2000 2:46:00 PM
From: UnBelievable	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

"Much Better To Keep the Faith. Faith is Always the Spirit." Even if Kudlow has every dollar he still has fully invested in stock will not receive just compensation for his deceit. The analysis is bad economics, wrongly applied, and used to draw misleading conclusions. What a fraud. Now the clowns have a fancy paper with pictures they can use to justify their stupidity. Even if you accepted his arguments as applied to $SPX he fails to mention the implications for $COMPX. During the last two years, during which he argues that the 30% increase in $SPX is justified, $COMPX increased to a peak of 165% in March and currently is "value" priced with only a 105% increase. When $COMPX reaches 2,600 we can discuss the other problems with his analysis. He must know less about geography than he does about economics. Last time I checked neither Chicago nor Stamford are in the Notheast. He, or the people who feed him, wouldn't have any interest in selling stock would they?

To: Les H who wrote (680)	6/25/2000 4:00:00 PM
From: patron_anejo_por_favor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

<<Larry Kudlow on Why the Bull Should Snort Higher>> Les, careful using Kudlow and snort in the same sentence! BTW, on the picture of Kudlow in the CNBS link, is that a pen he's holding? Or a rolled-up ClownBuck?

To: Les H who wrote (680)	6/25/2000 5:27:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 436258

Kudlow doesn't refute the long-accepted premise that stock price should bear a relationship with earnings. Kudlow argues that stocks should be analyzed using a simple discount-earnings model that uses Baa corporate bond rates as the discount rate. Kudlow claims that "capitalized after tax earnings of the S&P 500 divided by Baa corporate bonds" have kept pace with price growth of the S&P 500. If we used this same discount rate, what would Cisco be worth? Today's Washington Post claims that if Cisco has to restate earnings by eliminating pooling, it had no income growth for the last year. >>Executives and lobbyists from high-tech companies around the nation are working the halls of Capitol Hill and wearing "paths in the carpet," as one official put it, at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The object of this intense effort is not a new tax break from Congress or a regulatory complaint at the SEC. Instead, it is aimed, obliquely, at a tiny private-sector group in Connecticut that writes the accounting rules by which public corporations and their auditors must live. That's because the private group, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), has proposed a rule change, effective Jan. 1, that would do away with a frequently used method of accounting for mergers, known as "pooling of interests." And the FASB, at least so far, has turned aside the industry's arguments. Pooling lets companies take over rivals without having to amortize, or write off, as "goodwill" the value of various intangible assets--often a large part of the worth of today's knowledge-based companies. Instead, the FASB wants corporations to use "purchase accounting" and take a charge on their reported earnings each year as the value of the goodwill declines. The dispute provides a window on how a seemingly arcane accounting issue might affect transactions at the core of the "new economy" and how a significant part of corporate America is bringing political clout to bear on public and private regulators to protect its advantage. And as more Americans tie their financial future to the stock market, the outcome of these struggles has impact well beyond Wall Street and the professional investing world. The affected companies say the new rule would have calamitous results. Many of the major mergers of the past few years have been "pooling of interests" deals. America Online Inc.'s $10 billion takeover of Netscape Communications Corp. last year simply would not have taken place had the FASB's new rule been in place, James Barksdale, the browser company's former chief executive, has said on several occasions. A recent analysis by Merrill Lynch & Co. shows why. Taking numbers from earlier years and comparing them using the old rule and the new one, it found that the merged company would have been saddled with $688 million in goodwill to write off annually. This would have depressed earnings for years. For example, in one year the combined company would have seen a $35 million profit become a $653 million loss. The financial newspaper Barron's recently estimated that Cisco Systems Inc., a leading lobbyist in the effort to save pooling, probably would have had its $2 billion in earnings last year wiped out if it hadn't been able to use the accounting provision as it scooped up smaller companies. "Elimination of pooling will derail the engine that is driving the strong economy of this country," Cisco's controller, Dennis D. Powell, said in a recent interview.<< washingtonpost.com