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To: RetiredNow who wrote (55078)	9/7/2001 4:23:44 PM
From: GVTucker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77397

mindmeld, RE: Shit, Ed, we all know that Greenspan did a very idiotic thing by specifically targetting the stock market for implosion, with all his rhetoric about "irrational exuberance" and "wealth effect", blah blah blah. He aimed, fired, and killed the bull. I would bet my last nickel that had he not done so, many of these companies going bankrupt today, would have made it through to see a profit. Many very good companies are going bankrupt since they ran out of funding, thanks to the capital crunch he created. Take Metricom, for instance. Anyone who has used this wireless service for their laptops loved it. But they are gone now, because they didn't get the lifeline to reach economies of scale. If that was the case, then the market would be much lower than when Greenspan uttered his 'irrational exuberance' speech. On the contrary, we are much higher than those levels right now. Greenspan kept rates much lower than any Fed chairman that preceded him would have, given the economic environment. Contrary to what all these Greenspan-phobes preach nowadays, Greenspan bought into a decent piece of the 'New Economy' rhetoric. In fact, if Greenspan could be faulted in anything, it would be that he let rates stay too low too long, thereby encouraging the bubble. As far as Metricom is concerned, if their product was so wonderful, why is it that they couldn't make any money in their entire 16 years of existence? For the ten years that Metricom was a public company, their average annual revenue growth was less than 1%. That is not an indication of a company on the verge of success. Yeah, a lot of people liked Ricochet, but that is only a very small piece of building a successful company. Heck, a lot of people would love my company if I sold them dollar bills for 95¢, too. That wouldn't necessarily make it a good company. (Come to think of it, that is the business plan for many of the dot com businesses that failed in the past two years.) If this is an example of a company that you think Greenspan killed, you need to spend more time looking into your investments and less time whining about Greenspan in search of a scapegoat.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (55078)	9/7/2001 4:26:58 PM
From: SouthFloridaGuy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77397

That's where you people don't get it. Greenspan's fault did not lie in imploding the bubble - by it's very nature - bubbles eventually implode through free-market forces...but rather, it was under his watch that a bubble was created since 1995. The credit bubble was the greatest ever created, and like the Japanese, we do not know what skeletons lie under the closet of corporate America as they have hid their unprofitability through accounting tricks, stock buybacks, and the like.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (55078)	9/8/2001 12:09:52 AM
From: Stock Farmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77397

Mindmeld: Horse puckey. Go into the garden and plant a thousand carrot seeds in a square foot of space. Knowing carrots, probably about 500 sprout. How many do you expect to survive? I think you'd be closer to the truth that if it weren't for easy credit that far fewer companies would have started out. If it weren't for the bubble most people would be happy to get a two-bagger after twelve years. Companies like Metricom which needed huge economies of scale to get off the ground would have been told "nice try, but come back when you don't need to be so big to survive". Instead they got the go-ahead. We had companies that hadn't been profitable IPO. We even had companies that hadn't shipped product go IPO. This NEVER should have started. That it was snuffed earlier or later is immaterial. And the sad part is we're not yet back to where we would have been without a bubble. And that its existence ripped the foundations out from under any number of established businesses. John