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To: Bill Harmond who wrote (7846)	7/8/2001 9:10:01 PM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (7) \| Respond to of 57684

william i think you and many others have grown complacent with your belief that the impoverished societies are going to continue to send us cheap materials so we can live high off the hog while they remain in poverty. this may work in a military dictatorship, or with communism, because without economic freedom in a country, those who are in power are free to plunder for their own selfish interests and are ambivalent about the prices they are selling their goods at, just as long as they are lining their pockets. as capitalism and what goes along with it (freedom; enlightenment; opportunity) becomes pervasive, people in underdeveloped natural resource rich countries are going to wake up to the notion that america's been living the high life at their expense. chinese and indonesians have been working 80 hour work weeks for mere pittance over the last 20 years so you can enjoy low prices for all that you consume. well they are catching on to the fact that there's more to life than working in a textile factory. they don't want to work 16 hours a day in a factory for 10 cents an hour so you can drive a big SUV and chat on the internet all day. now in the past many chinese weren't exposed to all the fun stuff us american's were enjoying. their government controlled what they read, and what they did. well about 20 years ago the communist party in china said our system sucks, and they started deregulating their markets. they are much smarter about it than the russians, who thought they could instantly go from being communists one day to capitalists the next. that is why china is moving as fast as they can, but at a somewhat orderly pace. now most chinese have televisions and some even have computers and the internet, and they pack 'em in so tight over there that you don't have to walk too far to see your neighbors internet if you don't have it yourself. you think as the extremely disciplined and hard working chinese become enlightened to all that's out there they are going to continue to work in a factory making you a pair of nike tennis shoes? hell no, they are going to run circles around us lazy americans even if they have to work secret deals with clinton to get a hold of our technology to do it. as the chinese become far more productive (your favorite word), they are going to have more leisure time and more money to spend. they are going to want to consume just like you do william. the more taste of freedom people have the more they want. well do you think the world can easily support hundreds of millions of asian/indian consumers along with us westerners? the only reason we have been able to live high off the hog for so long is because we have plundered the rest of the earth through warfare, then later on with economic warfare. the only way we can continue to live the way we have is for the rest of the world to live in the dark ages, under military and communist dictatorships which oppress people so much that they don't consume anything. think about it for just a second. -we have had japan, the 2nd largest economy in the world stagnant for a whole decade. -we have had economic crises in all of asia and russia and latin america in 1997/1998. -now we have our own slowdown to contend with and slowing in europe and serious problems in latin america starting to show up. we have never had the whole world all in sync at one time. somebody has always been dragging demand down. what happens under your scenario if japan starts to recover, we re-ignite our 27 year boom, and china continues to grow at a break-neck pace. you are going to have the three largest economies in the world all placing huge demands on commodities and natural resources. do you think prices will remain at historical lows while everyone wants to build, and drive, and wire themselves up? do you think there won't be scuffles scrapes and outright war as countries argue over who has the rights to these ever more precious commodities? who is going to provide the cheap commodities for the u.s., china, and japan? do you think the opec countries are going to be friendly to us and sell us cheap oil? japan doesn't have any oil!!! we are about out of oil here in the u.s.!!! china has been a net importer of oil products since 1993!! where is all the cheap oil going to come from? where are all the metals going to come from? who is going to feed a couple billion chinese and indians who start eating better? i know, technology is going to fix everything, right? yes it will, but only after prices go high enough where we decide whoa, we need an alternative to oil for energy. skyrocketing prices for energy and other commodities will be exactly the reason we come up with new technology to decrease our dependance on oil and other things. but we will not seriously work to address the issues until prices rise first.

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (7846)	7/8/2001 10:44:32 PM
From: craig crawford	Respond to of 57684

cheers! finance.yahoo.com^N225&d=c&k=c1&a=v&p=s&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (7846)	7/8/2001 11:10:44 PM
From: craig crawford	Respond to of 57684

what do you make of the relative strength in commodities? we had an asian/russian/latin american economic crisis in 97/98, and commodities bottomed in Q1 '99. even in the face of this worldwide slowdown, commodities (whether you gauge it by the CRB, Dow AIG, GSCI, Rogers Raw Materials Fund, etc are firmly above their asian crisis lows. is it your view that commodities are acting (relatively) strong because they are forecasting a rather quick end to this crisis, or some other factor? granted the averages do tend to be skewed toward energy. >> What color does zinc cause in fireworks? << what is the purpose of this question and questions about boats and condos? obviously you are trying to make some sort of point.