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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: M. Frank Greiffenstein who wrote (2570)	6/28/2001 3:13:50 PM
From: Ahda	Respond to of 24758

Japan was tinkering due to increased reliance on exterior sales and with the rapid increase so came dollars and inflation head on head with a world that was in competition with her. Japan would of been much smarter to attempt no prop up let poverty set where it had to and then innovation would again build up. How many intelligent people have had numerous business adventures fail before the one clicks makes success. The difference is when there is a constant drain you find another means for profit. When you have government interference It is keeping up what should by all rights go down. Is not the result of that excessive wealth to some? Downward has an opposite direction called upward. Mucking along means getting muckier the longer it goes on. I think we are in the muckier situation here.

To: M. Frank Greiffenstein who wrote (2570)	6/28/2001 3:58:52 PM
From: Elsewhere	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24758

What does big demosntrations have to do with the power of unions? They sit on just about every German corporate board, they don't need to demonstrate! With the rise of unemployment the unions have become a lot quieter, both on the streets and on the boards. Where is the political will to bring about the necessary changes? They are being done without making a lot of fuss about it. I was very sceptical about Schröder but he has the right consultants and has achieved much more than Helmut Kohl in a comparable time frame. There is a new fad now, sentimental yearning for the rites and culture of the former GDR. It's just a fad, less than western movies in the USA, I guess. And some businesses thrive on it. Think of how much CobaltBlue likes his Berlin Wall piece. I doubt that anywhere else a comparable amount of money has been made with a few tons of concrete. The former East Germans are balking at any suggestion that they should do something for themselves A lot of AMD processors are made in Dresden. amd.com The GM plant with the highest productivity of all European sites is in Eisenach. opel.de Intel is pondering a fab in Frankfurt/Oder. communicant.de

To: M. Frank Greiffenstein who wrote (2570)	6/29/2001 6:31:19 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24758

...maybe progress is being made, but as Don points out, it is tinkering at the edges. We have been hearing the same story about Japan for the last 5-6 years, but the Japanese also tinkered at the edges, while continuuing to build up more debt for pork barrel projects, e.g., bullet trains that go nowhere. What does big demosntrations have to do with the power of unions? They sit on just about every German corporate board, they don't need to demonstrate! I don't think it's a good idea to compare Germany and Japan The Japanese upper management/ownership the last ten years has uselessly gone through every contortion imaginable to avoid having their banks take the equity hit - can't say the same thing about Germany. Its financial system is honest compared to Japan's and it had to deal with the disaster of East Germany partly by pumping an awful lot of money in there and re-privatizing after the communists. Not easy in a place with only a black market and vague memories of entreprenurial and business activity. (I'm prejudiced, of course, I bought shares in FBCE in Fall of 99 on the basis that much in demand product, low priced plant, government supprt, educated, skilled workforce, and sophisticated American and German management, would make it a winner and it's been a very good investment, so far). The union participation at board level is a red herring, in my view. Big business units create big union units - the question you have to answer therefore is what sort of relation are they going to have? Confrontive: then at what level - in the boardroom, throughout the enterprise, on the street? Cooperative: again, at what level? Reality demands the relation be sometimes confrontive and other times cooperative but, mostly, these large units have more in common with each other than they do with anyone else and Adam Smith had lots to say about that - they will conspire. (Members of UAW, for instance, have more in common with GM, Ford and Chrysler than they have with members of United Steel Workers or Garment Workers.) The socialism in Germany, which so concerns some people, has to with attitudes held nearly by everyone there, including management, and these don't remain unchanging, but they don't change overnight, either. Social/economic arrangements are like most other things - they get worked out by trial and error and it's not always a benign process. I've read ahead in the posts and there has been praise heaped on capitalism/free markets as the wealth and democracy creator par excellence. This is true, but in most parts of the world, apart from US and Canada, the history of achieving free markets has been a very nasty story especially where the mercantilists who stole the commons wanted (and want) to keep the new action for themselves (the poor are formidable competitors). We shouldn't expect the missionaries of free markets to meet with open arms everywhere because there is suspicion well founded in local history....And the new mercantilists - socialists, and nut bar right wingers (there's no convenient label for them) - are fabulous liars. They're in seventh heaven when they can steal both the market and the government. FrankW