To: tcmay who wrote (144010 ) 9/24/2001 2:08:26 PM From: Road Walker Read Replies (3) | Respond to Tim,This is a term of art. Do some reading on how many sleepers are projected to be amongst us. They are sleepers, amongst us, and have _always_ been hunkering down. However, if they climb up on their apartment roof and use one of their 90 or so Stingers to down a 747 on takeoff from LAX, the "increased security" of banning fingernail clippers will be moot. Why this is so is a simple matter of economic game theory. Coupled with issues of causality, i.e., what any individual person does or does not do will not cause changes in what others do, to first order. Buying a new SUV will not cause others to. Not buying a new SUV will leave money in their pockets which they may need in a crisis. And so on. Think about this for a while and you'll see the logic. Yes, which is why I acknowledge their success. They did several hundred billion dollars worth of overall damage at a tiny cost. A lot of bang for the buck, which means other vengeance-oriented groups will be thinking about the same thing (and maybe even some short sellers). I'm just not listening to the advice from politicians and fund managers to "buy to help the economy!," a la the patriotic buying program of a week ago...where the institutions unloaded a lot of their shares in a falling market to "small investor patriots."
