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Technology Stocks : Alliance Semiconductor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Herc who wrote (9243)	3/23/2001 9:31:50 AM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 9582

<So my figures for the shares owned by ALSC are correct?> yes they are correct

To: Herc who wrote (9243)	3/23/2001 1:51:31 PM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 9582

12:51 Dallas Fed economist says manufacturing may have bottomed N ANTONIO, Texas,, March 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. manufacturing sector, which has technically been in a recession for several months, has probably seen the bottom of the downturn, said Michael Cox, senior vice president and chief economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Texas. "There's no reason for manufacturing to expect to continue to decline. And we're probably looking at the bottom, or near- bottom already," Cox said in an interview on the sidelines of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries conference here. With technology improving inventory controls and production systems, Cox said the long-run prospects for the manufacturing sector are very positive. He said things are better than they used to be for manufacturers, "in the sense that we used to let inventories build up, because we didn't have as good of inventory controls. "Because of inventory management systems, the recession will be over quicker," he added. He went on to say the country may not even be in a recession, even though it may seem like it. "When you slow down from eight percent growth to two or three percent growth it feels like a recession. It could be our feeling is just slowness and not recession at all," he said. Economists usually define recession as two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP). "Certain parts of the economy will probably be in recession. Others won't," he said. "It looks like the home building business and construction is not going to be. But manufacturing is now. The service industry is not in recession. The overall economy is not." Citing work by an analyst at the Dallas Fed, Cox thinks that, when the economy begins to pick up, it will happen much more rapidly than in past economic cycles. He said the research shows that, "in modern recessions the downturn is quicker and more ephemeral, less long-lived. And the snap back is quicker too." In the long-term, Cox is upbeat on U.S. manufacturing, pointing out that U.S. manufacturers are extremely good at incorporating new technologies to become more efficient. "Now, (manufacturing) has done that, but it has laid off a lot of people," the Fed economist said, adding the sector accounted for about 25 or 30 percent of the workforce in the 50's. "The percentage of the labor force employed in manufacturing will probably be down to a single digit by 2010. That doesn't mean the industry is suffering. It means the industry will be doing quite well because it is incorporating new technologies." The increased efficiency in U.S. manufacturing systems has made them more competitive against foreign manufacturers, who have been much slower about incorporating technological upgrades. "By incorporating all these new technologies and informational products, like smart controls, they are guaranteeing that (U.S. manufacturers) will be a player tomorrow and we will be able to compete with the rest of the world. I'm very bullish about manufacturing in the long run," he said. "We call (manufacturing) the old economy, but it is becoming a new-old economy, by making smart products, smart machines."