Yes it is, the only caveat is the 'accounting bomb' factor. It's amazing how far WCOM has come, I last traded it possibly a year ago, doing a couple day trade where I bought around 36 and sold around 39. Telecom right now is driven (IMO) by lots of emotion fueled by the continuing bad news. Of course that is when good bucks can be made, ala the market this past fall. As a totally off topic aside, I found this excerpt from an article in today's NY Times about Nokia in Finland just amazing!! Imagine if our gov't gets wind of their method of calculating traffic fines <ggg>...
Regards,
John
February 6, 2002
Not in Finland Anymore? More Like Nokialand
By ALAN COWELL
Ilkka Uimonen/Corbis Sygma
Thanks to Nokia, the giant cellphone manufacturer, Finland is the most interconnected nation in the world. In addition to relying on the devices, the country depends on the company to underpin the economy.
The New York Times
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ELSINKI, Finland, Feb. 1 — After the company town, behold the corporate nation.
The concerns over a Nokia pullout point at a deeper malaise — the growing collision between a traditional, sheltered, high-tax society and the harsher, global rules by which Nokia is obliged to play. Only 1.47 percent of the Nokia's total sales occur in Finland, and more than 90 percent of its shares are held by people outside the country, particularly Americans, who clamor for higher valuations.
Nokia, said Ilkka Tuomi, a former executive with the company, "has opened Finnish society very quickly to global values." But it has also exposed the vulnerabilities of dependence on a company whose interests, ultimately, do not mainly lie at home.
As Nokia's rate of growth shrank last year for the first time since 1995, Finland's growth plummeted from 5 percent in 2000 to 0.7 percent in 2001, even though domestic economic conditions had not changed substantially, said a Jyrki Ali-Yrkko, a Finnish economist.
That has Finns worried.
"It is in the Finnish mentality to believe that, after lots of laughter, it will end in tears," said Minna Ruckenstein, a Finnish anthropologist and author of a new book based on her experiences living in California's Silicon Valley. "So they are asking: What happens after Nokia?"
Some Finns are also wondering whether the proliferation of other high-tech companies has introduced the get-rich-quick values of world technology markets at the expense of a deeper national yearning for egalitarianism.
"It's the first time in this egalitarian society that some people got rich quickly," said Olli Kivinen, a columnist at Finland's biggest newspaper. "There's a lot of envy, resentment of this money."
According to Mikko Puhakka, a venture capitalist, roughly 35 of Finland's 50 richest people made their money from Nokia jobs or stock holdings.
The challenge to the country's traditional values from the disparity between the new wave of millionaires and ordinary Finns came to light most famously last month when a top Nokia executive, Anssa Vanjoki, was fined a staggering $100,000 for a relatively minor speeding offense on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Mr. Vanjoki was traveling at 46 miles an hour in a 30-mile-an-hour zone. The fine, as is customary in Finland, was calculated as a proportion of his most recent audited earnings — inflated in this case by the sale of Nokia stock that earned him in excess of $2 million.
The new inequalities have arisen rapidly: only in 1997 did Nokia's share price begin to zoom (until then, many foreigners who bought its mobile phones thought they were buying Japanese products).
Although the Internet bubble has burst and Nokia's share price is only around a third of its record highs in 2000, the company's influence on Finnish society is the clearest example of a broader collision of values within Europe's welfare states.
In the Nordic countries in particular, the state has long provided health care, education, unemployment benefits and pensions to citizens ready to pay high taxes. All Finnish schooling, for instance, is free; at colleges, the state pays students allowances starting around $300 a month to cover living expenses. People who lose their jobs receive benefits equivalent to full salary for 15 months.
While the high standard of education has been one factor in Nokia's success, high taxes has also tended to put a damper on initiative.
"There has not been a lot of incentive," said Mr. Tuomi, the former Nokia executive. "Taxation has made it very difficult to become rich." |
