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To: BigBull who wrote (87241)	3/28/2001 9:18:11 PM
From: BigBull	Respond to of 436258

Good old fashioned bear talk. I was beginning to wonder were it all went last week. biz.yahoo.com latimes.com Also this weekend we had dinner with our friend Jim. We hadn't seen him for over a year. Last time we saw Jim, a wealthy commercial real estate developer in Boston, he was executing trades from his PC as CNBC droned in the background. Back then, Jim laughed and joked with us as he picked up a hundred thousand bucks here and there on his trades between phone calls and visits from desperate clients fighting for limited office space in the crowded Boston market. We warned Jim that he was gambling on a bubble that was about to burst. When we had dinner over the weekend, Jim was in a very dark mood. He'd lost over $5M since we last saw him. Now the commercial real estate market was collapsing, too. He was worried that he might lose everything. We had dinner with another friend from San Francisco who had lost her job two months earlier. Her husband was laid off Friday. She found a consulting job at a friend's company . Now this is their only income. She was very worried that between them they would not have enough income to pay the bills. Their savings would carry them only a couple of months. If her husband did not also get at least a part time consulting job, they'd be out of money by the end of June. This is the point where the tragic effects of a collapsing economic bubble begin to be felt. This is not Japan where the average household has $100,000 in savings and virtually no credit card debt. This is the U.S.A. where 40% of U.S. households have less than $1000 in liquid assets and 65% percent have less than $5000. The average U.S. household has more than $8000 in credit card debt. Stock market investors have started to realize that they are not going to make back the money they lost. "Oh, please, Al Greenspan. If you reflate the bubble I promise I'll sell and never gamble in the stock market again." Give it up. He can't. The stock for which you paid $220 a share will never see a P/E north of 20. Ever. Now middle aged men and women with credit card debts and mortgages, little savings and families to feed begin to worry about losing their job. If they have lost their job they worry that they will not be able to find another before the savings run out and the current month's bills come due. (Watch the rate of credit card, mortgage and car lease defaults skyrocket over the next year.) That's what makes this downturn different. U.S. households took on a lot of debt and put their savings into the now deflated stock market that they believed was a sure thing, all on the assumption that at least one income but more often two incomes were also a sure thing. With unemployment rising, how can anything less than an implosion in consumer confidence and a severe depression result? itulip.com

To: BigBull who wrote (87241)	3/28/2001 10:18:52 PM
From: Anthony Clement	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

That article amazes me. Having spent several weeks in Japan over the last few months I have a completely different view point. Living downtown Tokyo I probably ran into a couple of homeless people in two weeks, here in the states I probably see three just walking ONE block everyday!! Just two weeks ago when in the Ginza and the Shibuya area I was literally run off my feet by people in shops. Nothing was priced at 100 yen!!! Hardship is definitely more obvious in the States. English Karen