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Strategies & Market Trends : Strictly: Drilling II -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (4130)	11/17/2001 9:45:59 PM
From: isopatch	Respond to of 36161

Joan. Had it drummed into me back in the mid-70s when I was a broker in training that during the 1930s municipal bonds had an extremely low default rate. Therefore they've traditionally been viewed as 2nd in safety only to US Gov obligations. But fwiw, MO is tradition isn't the reliable guide it was 25 years ago. Government at all levels has balooned to extraordinary levels. As you correctly point out, many state, county and local authorities are on paper hanging rampages. Every time there's a problem in the private economy? There's no effort to reform the business practices that cause the problem. The constant mantra is "Fed government takeover". We just saw it again with the airline bill. As usual, the liberal/left has the media hammering and pounding week after week on public opinion. So all the democrats had to do was stall till the anti-business propaganda storm blew away the pro-business conservatives. Bush had no choice but to finally cave this week. With the media covering their worthless butts the left could have stalled into next year. And who knows how many more deaths they would have caused. You can't really govern if the guys on the other side of the aisle control the TV transmitter towers and public opinion along with it. The liberal/left obviously didn't give a hoot about leaving America's air travel system defenseless against terrorists while the callously stonewalled any meaningful compromise for TWO FREAKIN' MONTHS, folks!!!. Talk about big government serving itself and screwing the public to feather its own nest?!. That was one of the best examples of it I've ever seen. Back to munis Am luke warm about them overall for the above as well as other reasons. Don't have any myself right now. Made mention of them in the post because some folks are more enthusiastic about them than I am. And they are a natural component of any summary of fixed income alternatives. Isopatch