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

To: LLCF who wrote (68484)	2/16/2001 12:21:22 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

I Want My SUV to Want Me. by Cheap Debt "The real story of the 1990s," concludes a recent Economic Policy Institute report, "was not the stock market boom but the debt explosion." More than 1.2 million Americans filed for protection from creditors under federal bankruptcy laws last year, and the number could increase by as much as 20 percent this year. Consumers are devoting 34.1 percent of after-tax income to keep up with required payments on installment, mortgage debt, home-equity loans and vehicle leases. The average U.S. household has enough savings to support three months of current consumption. The average U.S. household has $8000 in credit card debt. More than 40% of U.S. households have less than $1,000 in liquid assets and 65% have less than $5000. The wealthiest 1 percent of households have an average net worth 167 times that of households in the middle 20 percent but the average debt held by the top 1 percent was only six times as great as the middle 20 percent. Homeowners can claim just 54 percent of their home's value in equity, down from 70 percent a generation ago. U.S. corporations could default on some $33 billion in loans this year, a jump of over 40 percent from last year.

To: LLCF who wrote (68484)	2/16/2001 12:44:08 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

CPU hedonics from fallstreet --Exactly how much more productive is a Pentium 1.4 G than a 700 MHz system? According to the latest BLS figures the hedonic adjustment for CPU speed is $3.53 per MHz. That is, the workers producing the 1.4 GHz PC are assumed to have created an extra $2471 worth of value with their time, over & above the sale of the PC. If 1.4 GHz PCs sell now for the same price 700 MHz PCs sold last year -- say $2000, just to make up a number -- and if it took the exact same amount of labor and capital to produce both PCs, then the change in "hedonic value" is (2000+2471)/2000 = 224%. J.S. With all this "New Age" / "New Economy" business of computerized supply chain management, enterprise resource management, just in time inventory, etc., why are we going through a massive inventory correction? Weren't the gee-whiz software of firms like Manugistics and Oracle supposed to prevent this? I wonder what guarantees or warranties for defective merchandise provided. C.S.