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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (11994)	1/1/2002 2:01:22 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 74559

Happy New Year to all the great people who post on Booms, Busts and Recoveries! Too many posts while I was gone but it looks like you all were having fun. I see gold was a bust in 2001, and stocks were a boom if you bought them in September - which is what I predicted. My crystal ball sees a flat bottom in earnings in 2002, barring further man-made catastrophes like 9/11. Of course, stock prices refuse to have any relationship to earnings in the short run, so I have no idea where stock prices will be, but my guess is up, for no other reason except that consumer confidence is returning. My aunt showed me a brightly colored see-through calculator that she bought for $1 at Walmart. Made in China, no doubt, or maybe Malaysia or whatever country is willing to undercut China just to remain in business. I remember paying $125 in a department store in Baton Rouge for a calculator that performed the same functions (add, subtract, multiply, divide, square root, percent) in 1972, although I am sure you could buy them cheaper at, say, an electronics store in Manhattan. Not sure how anyone can make a profit at that price, but I know in the USA we can't compete with that. I don't know how to make money on it, but I think we are the next abracadabra. The world's center of gravity is shifting from the North Atlantic to the Pacific Rim - Jay in China, Kastel in Canada, David in Australia, all the people in California and the West Coast - but the rest of us are plugged in, too - DJ in Germany, Don and CB on the East Coast, El Mat in Brazil, etc. I did ALL my Christmas shopping on the Internet this year - none of it from Amazon.com. Next year I am even going to buy my tree via the Internet. Multiplied by all the other on-line shoppers, this means that a lot of middle-men are going to be put out of work, and a lot of manufacturers are going to be able to sell retail rather than wholesale, and a lot of consumers are going to get lower prices. GDP will be lower, but manufacturers, producers and consumers will be better off. Unemployment will increase, but there will be more jobs for US citizens in fields like airport security. Undocumented aliens will have to return to their own countries. Too complicated to predict the eventual outcome of that. If the Hispanics have to go home, then the birth rate will decline, which is probably not a good thing in the long run. My 70 year old father finally got plugged in and has become as bad an Internet addict as I am, except that he's hunting for wife #4. ;^)