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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KHS who wrote (40929)	9/4/2001 4:17:30 PM
From: Jim Willie CB	Respond to of 65232

my two cents on NT and big fiberoptic telecoms that space had a surge at the millenium end gross miscalculation of future demand strange misreads of excess capacity (unused fiber) is it lit or dark? broadband to homes caught up in last mile DSL had a snag delay, now rolling along I dont think JDSU, NT, LU, CIEN will see return to nearly all cylinders for 1-2 yrs at least while it is debated, the NT share price will languish until demonstrated to have a strong future will high likelihood Nortel took pride in getting heavily involved in fiberoptic now it is a problem for them they are not so bound to circuit switching technology not like LUcent, but they are hurting nonetheless personally I wanna see LUcent die my ex-fatherinlaw had his entire pension plan with shares uck him, and his horse wanna see that sumbitch homeless and toothless / jim

To: KHS who wrote (40929)	9/5/2001 1:18:42 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

Productivity Growth Revised Down Wednesday September 5, 12:55 pm Eastern Time By Caren Bohan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The productivity of U.S. workers grew strongly in the second quarter but the increase was less impressive than originally thought, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a private firm projected that the steady drumbeat of company layoffs would keep up in coming months. The latest figures on nonfarm productivity, measuring the amount of goods and services workers produce each hour, showed a 2.1 percent annual-rate gain for the April-to-June period. That was revised downward from the 2.5 percent pace the department had previously estimated. However, the productivity growth rate was still solid, given the U.S. economy's weakness. Productivity growth, which in the longer run is key to rising standards of living, typically suffers as the economy downshifts. ``If we can do this well in productivity in the wake of economic slowdown, it means the best is yet to come,'' said Anthony Chan, chief economist at Banc One Investment Advisors in Columbus, Ohio. U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, advanced at an anemic 0.2 percent annual rate in the second quarter, its slowest growth in eight years. The revised second-quarter productivity number was a shade better than the 2 percent pace projected by U.S. economists in a Reuters survey. In the first quarter, productivity eked out a mere 0.1 percent increase. FACTORIES A WEAK POINT The weak area of the report was the manufacturing sector, where productivity rose at a 1.1 percent rate in April to June, revised from a previously reported 0.2 percent drop. Although productivity growth is a healthy economic sign in the long run, one way firms are trying to bolster efficiency and boost profits at a time when they are throttling back production is by thinning out their workforces. The latest report from the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said job cuts totaled 140,019 in August, down 32 percent from July when companies announced 205,975 layoffs. However, job cut announcements grew 145 percent when compared with August of last year. ``There is no evidence reported by any industry that anything that could be called a significant sustainable rebound is on the horizon for this year or even early next year,'' the report said. The high-tech industries of telecommunications, computers and electronics were hit hardest -- total layoff announcements in the three sectors rose 1,223 percent from one year prior. Chan said he expected factories, which have aggressively laid off workers in recent months, to see a pickup in productivity soon. In the second quarter, unit-labor costs, a closely watched gauge of wage inflation, advanced at a 2.7 percent pace following a 5 percent jump in the first quarter. Labor previously had said second-quarter unit-labor costs increased at 2.1 percent rate. Productivity growth, and the contribution new technology makes to it, has been an issue of key interest to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in recent years. Greenspan has hailed productivity gains that have enabled the economy to grow faster without inflation. HIGH-TECH ECONOMY The information economy was the main theme at a top-notch symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., attended by Greenspan and other policymakers, academics and business economists last weekend. Uncertainty dominated the discussions, with several participants saying the U.S. economy can skirt recession if productivity holds up, but could face trouble if output per worker falls to rates averaged in the 1970s and 1980s. Worker productivity grew at an average 1.8 percent annual rate during the 1970s and 1.5 percent in the 1980s. It was a bit faster in the 1990s, at 2.1 percent but was particularly rapid as the economy boomed during the late 1990s. Richard Berner, chief economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, who attended the Jackson Hole conference, said the latest productivity numbers ``were very consistent with the notion that the trend rate of productivity growth is around 2 to 2.5 percent a year.'' Berner said the consensus of the Jackson Hole economists centered on a long-term productivity growth rate of around 2.5 percent. Productivity in the second quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago grew 1.5 percent, down from 3 percent during all of 2000 and 2.3 percent in 1999.