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

To: BGR who wrote (84188)	10/13/2000 1:09:00 PM
From: Earlie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

BGR: I don't hold opinions on rates, I just observe. It's there and it doesn't seem to be shrinking. (g) I don't analyze currencies either, but I do try to understand what is going on behind the big numbers. Not terribly successful here, but perhaps a tad better than the "average bear". Historically, massive trade deficits have typically been dealt with through currency crunches. The changing "reserve currency" status of the buck and the emerging probability that the Euro will be accepted as a reserve currency, sure do make it a muddy pond in which to snorkle, but one does have to try. Is the U.S. economy "strong"? Certainly debatable, particularly given that the government stats are so useless and distorted. IMHO, it's far too vulnerable to a debt-burdened consumer. Best, Earlie No doubt the historic spreads that have recently appeared in the U.S. bond markets (worse than the fall of 1998) speak to the -

To: BGR who wrote (84188)	10/13/2000 3:48:28 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

BGR, I still think there's a variety of interrelated factors that determine the strength of a currency. Economic growth is certainly one of them, but I think it's more complex than that. Sometimes it's as simple as "greed" and "fear". Even though I can't prove it, I'm fairly certain that a lot of the money coming into the US has simply been chasing the better returns from the stock market. More or less - momentum investing on an international level. That in turn has made the US economic performance better than it would otherwise be by providing hundreds of billions of dollars of savings for investment that would otherwise not be available. A chicken and egg scenario. Wayne