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

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (86575)	12/10/2000 6:03:46 PM
From: Spekulatius	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

Did the Grinch steal Christmas? I have been in the downtown shopping mall today. This is the first time since I came into this country that I saw many free parking spaces. My estimate is, that the foot traffic must be down more than 20% compared to last year. Most of the shopping mall space is just plain vanilla stuff, like Sears, Macy's etc. not the fancy gizmo electronic retailers or jewelliers. I haven't really seen any change in consumer behavior until October but my impression was that Thanksgiving was already fairly slow. Its kind of strange because the economy in the town I live is very very strong.Unemployment is virtually nonexistant and many people have been making money in the stock market hand over fist. Real estate is still as strong as usual, so the spending weakness is not across the board. I wonder is that my experience today was just an aberration. If my experience today is even remotely representative for the state of affairs in consumer spending, then we are heading full steam into a recession. Did anybody see a similar signs of spending slowdown?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (86575)	12/10/2000 8:03:38 PM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

" It is definitely a positive, until it is resolved, for drillers and alternative energy purveyors. The trick is not to get caught up into thinking that a short term imbalance is a long term trend, as many did during the recent tech mania." MB, I have some ideas about this since I have been studying it for some time. Will pass on soon FWIW. Meantime, have you read the new edition of John Train's book, updated, something like "Money Masters of Our Time"? One thing I learned was that Benjamin Graham thought that if you were going to go short you should short the entire market. Didn't realize I was following Graham when I shorted the Dow.