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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (94616)	2/23/2002 11:25:28 AM
From: Tommaso	Respond to of 132070

Just a small anecdotal thing, but I notice our local Toyota agency is selling "program" 2001 Camrys, loaded, with 30-40K on them, for under $15,000. In the classifieds, people are asking that much for Camrys with 80-100K and two years older. Sounds like the dealer might have some abandoned leases already from the zero-financing of late alst year.

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (94616)	2/23/2002 11:45:38 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Joan, This market reminds me very much of the early 1970s. The small and mid craps crashed and everyone stuffed the rescue boat of the Nifty Fifty. When they crashed, we got recession ala mode, recession on recession. (My apologies to Al Capp, whose Lil Abner said he always liked pork chop ala mode, pork chop on pork chop. <g>) What caused it that time? An energy shock. Something to think about as we make threats to Iraq and seem to be hated in oil producing countries.

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (94616)	2/24/2002 11:22:12 AM
From: Telemarker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Hi Joan, KT and all. Have been peering in here from time to time for the last couple of weeks. Thanks to all who contribute. Please excuse me if I merely restate opinions that have been set forth previously on the thread. Joan, the NASDAQ is still wildly overvalued IMO. Had we not just been where we were in terms of valuation, I'd be screaming that the NASDAQ, as well as all large U.S. growth stocks are in a giant bubble right now. What will cause a return to historically sane valuations? The answer that keeps smacking me in the head is the coming bust of the credit bubble. As you know, I've been quite worried about the developments in the "modern financial system" for over 5 years now. Well, the time is quickly approaching when the B.S will be exposed for all to see. We are now creating an environment where more people are willing to look at things that are wrong out there, and the fragility of our financial system isn't hard to see. For example, Nolan's latest piece discussing "structured finance": safehaven.ca Assuming that Nolan's facts are correct (I stopped checking them some time ago), shouldn't this be enough to put a serious scare into anyone?? How confident should we be that these entities, which have enormous incentives to continue "growing" at record pace, can and would accurately estimate the quality of these loans to 0.66% of gross?? Investment grade????LOL!!! Well, methinks that when these type of mechanisms are exposed and therefore cannot function as they have, liquidity will be gone. At that point, the demise of the NASDAQ will appear as a tiny gnat, while realistic assessments of the bad debts come to the forefront and foreign capital flees in terror. As we can see from the events in Argentina, everything goes along while one can get the next loan. That changes drastically the very second that the next loan isn't available. Am I a chicken little? Quite possibly! But, signs of stress are now clearly apparent in the credit markets. The only thing that is missing this time is the type of concern that we saw during the fall of 1998. Attempts at the prudent application of logic only leads me to one dark conclusion. My feeling is that those who keep their eyes on the big picture here and plan accordingly will be much better off than those spending their time looking at the charts. But, I'm afraid that nobody will escape unscathed when reality comes back into vogue. Bottom line is that I see a 30-40% chance of a major financial crisis during this year. Just my two cents (probably also overvalued). BTW, anyone else see the U.S. Dept. of Labor Stats. as leading the "new-era" charge into the realm of dubious accounting?? What will happen if people lose confidence in highly manipulated economic statistics. Will the foreign capital that has propped us up for so long hang around waiting for explanations/clarifications? Regards,