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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (87280)	12/20/2000 10:40:57 AM
From: Freedom Fighter	Respond to of 132070

Ron, I have several problems with the insurance comparison and the system in general. 1. Just because I don't have a perfect system in mind doesn't mean we can't make huge improvements to the current one that would dramatically lower the need for insurance. 2. The socialization of the banking and financial system would be more tolerable if it wasn't abused by the people running those systems (and connected to it) for their own personal gain. I think that's impossible given human nature and my experience observing Wall St. etc... 3. I don't like the idea of politicians being able to tax us via inflation. The vast majority of the population may not understand what's going on, but if they are going to tax us I'd like people to be able to see a Bill with a politician's name on it. That was we can throw the bum out if we think it was bad idea. This way, most people are clueless. 4. The excesses can become so huge that the insurance system won't work without totally destroying the currency. Wayne

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (87280)	12/20/2000 12:28:11 PM
From: Skeeter Bug	Respond to of 132070

>>There are issues that are more threatening to the financial system than what folks are currently railing about, namely the ease with which individuals can declare bankruptcy and free themselves of the liabilities they have created.<< ron, this is a BIG reason why some folks are railing against the recent credit bubble. publicly funded bailouts is another.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (87280)	12/20/2000 1:07:12 PM
From: Ahda	Respond to of 132070

What do you do when you run out of paper provisions to ease reality? Secondly if there is too much debt there is a point of a very slim chance of return and how is that handled? Does the government start bailing out and increase debt and reduce the value of the dollar yet more? By Herb Greenberg Senior Columnist Originally posted at 6:30 AM ET 12/19/00 on RealMoney.com Briefly: Microsoft madness: Could it be that one of the biggest clues that Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq - news) would eventually preannounce, and that there had been a fundamental change in its biz, was there for all to see ... on its operating cash-flow statement? Analysts almost never like to see the amount of cash a company is taking in and the amount of money a company is earning go in opposite directions. "If earnings are growing and the company is consuming cash, that's one of the largest red lights on the balance sheet decoder ring," says Bill Fleckenstein of Fleckenstein Capital Management, who wasn't talking about Microsoft. Falling cash flow, in fact, hasn't ever really been an issue at Microsoft, and you wouldn't have known it was one over the past year unless you noted a subtle change in its cash-flow calculation: Instead of putting "stock option income tax benefits" under the cash flow from financings section, as it always had, it was quietly shifted it into cash flow from operations, where most companies report it. (The company can deduct the difference between the option strike price and the market value of its stock, thereby lowering its income tax and allowing it to keep more cash.) If Microsoft hadn't made that change, cash flow from operations would've fallen by 12% for all of last year. Enter the first quarter of this year and the options tax benefit itself fell dramatically, making it irrelevant to cash flow. But guess what? Deferred income taxes suddenly shot up $1 billion over the same quarter last year, and without that, cash flow from operations would've likely fallen from the year-ago quarter. Why worry? "As an investor, I don't think you should count on a continual or permanent deferred tax improvement in cash flows each quarter -- especially of that magnitude, " says Spencer Nauman of Integral Funds in Denver, a private investment partnership. Nauman, who sold all of his Microsoft stake at higher prices, says the falling cash flow may be flashing a warning that "Microsoft may have hit an 'economic wall' in terms of growth prospects for their core business. The main cash generating products are Windows and Office. They have remarkable penetration in both of these areas, and it is very difficult for them to grow sales outside of the upgrade market. After all, they virtually have all of the market share they can possibly grab." Microsoft doesn't dispute our conclusion, but a spokeswoman says: "You can take out what you want to take out of the cash-flow statement. All I can tell you is Microsoft follows GAAP." Indeed it does!