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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (11070)	1/5/2003 5:49:54 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Dollar Weakness May Not Help Stocks Sunday January 5, 12:40 pm ET By Brad Dorfman CHICAGO (Reuters) - Currency fluctuations are a dime a dozen to investors, so while a declining dollar might help profits and sales for U.S. manufacturers with big overseas businesses, their stock prices may not follow suit, analysts said. "Most investors look past that because it's proven over long periods of time the strength and weakness of currency tends to be an exact wash," said John Zimmerman, senior market strategist at Banc of America Capital Management, which had about $229 billion in assets under management as of Sept. 30. After several quarters of seeing the strength of the dollar cut into sales and profits from overseas operations, large manufacturers -- ranging from consumer products company Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE:PG - News) to automaker General Motors Corp. (NYSE:GM - News) to chemical company Dow Chemical Co. (NYSE:DOW - News) -- started to benefit from the currency's decline in the second half of 2002. That trend is expected to accelerate in the early part of 2003. A weaker dollar helps companies in several ways. Sales and profits that are recorded in euros or yen are worth more when they are translated into dollars on company income statements. At the same time, stronger foreign currencies buy more U.S. exports. LEVEL PLAYING FIELD Companies with heavy foreign competition, notably automakers, find that a weakening dollar helps to level the playing field with their Japanese and European counterparts. A year ago, a dollar could be exchanged for 135 yen. That level has fallen to about 120 today. Meanwhile, the euro traded at about 1.05 to the dollar earlier this week, its highest level in three years. About 40 percent of the profits of Standard & Poor's 500 index (CBOE:^SPX - News) companies are related to overseas activities, and a large part of that comes from Europe, analysts said. "I think the euro will prove to be a positive going forward, but remember, a lot of companies hedge their exposure going forward and it gets to be complex determining what the impact on (earnings per share) is," said Franklin Morton, senior vice president, portfolio management, at Ariel Capital Management, which has $10 billion in assets under management. "It will take a little longer for it to read through to the EPS line." Hedging and other strategies companies adopted when the dollar was working against them could mute the benefit of a weaker dollar now that the currency has turned around, analysts said. "I don't think it's going to be as extraordinary on the upside as it was on the downside when the dollar went on a tear six or seven years ago," said Graham Copley, a chemical industry analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. PROTECTION Starting two or three years ago, chemical companies launched strategies to protect themselves, the most important being debt issuance, he said. They started issuing more debt in local currencies, which in turn decreased the amount of profits that needed to be converted from weak currencies into stronger dollars. But just as companies try to level their exposure to fluctuating currencies, investors try to smooth out the impact of currency movements by looking at earnings over a long period of time. "Investors pretty much ignore currency movement because currencies move up and down," said Brian Zavalkoff, senior portfolio manager at LaSalle Wealth Management, a unit of ABN AMRO that manages $15.7 billion in assets. "Some years they'll benefit, some years they will detract, so you try to normalize the earnings stream." That is the message companies have tried to get out to investors when the dollar was strong -- ignore the currency impact, focus on operations. But with the currencies turning in companies' favor, some analysts doubt whether executives will give currency moves as much credit for improved earnings as they gave blame when currencies hurt earnings. "That's no different than any other issue," Ariel Capital's Morton said. "Did you ever see a press release that said 'Due to a great economy our earnings are up'? You see a lot of them that say due to a crappy economy our earnings are down." biz.yahoo.com

To: lurqer who wrote (11070)	1/6/2003 12:20:49 AM
From: lurqer	Respond to of 89467

For those that haven't seen investorshub.com lurqer

To: lurqer who wrote (11070)	1/6/2003 8:09:04 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

I could give you hundreds of references of the Sharia in the Ottoman Empire And if you look at the details, you will see that it was really not the sharia we know and detest at this point in time. Take a look at the legal system during the Ottoman Empire. using Google, type in devshirme and slave and you will find many references I am sorry but devshirme were not slaves, no matter how many Google sites claim they are. The very fact that many devshirmes rose to the Grand Vezir post, and that children of devshirmes were NOT accepted as devshirmes shows that this was not a slave status. Re conversion to Islam of the devshirme - I think there was a misunderstanding. My understanding was that you were suggesting the devshirme system as one of the tools through which the conquered lands were converted to Islam in Ottoman times: As for the Ottoman Empire, not only did they have the Sharia, but exercised a particularly heinous practice of devshirme. Message 18394190 ... which is how we got to this subject in the first place. When I said "Converting them to Islam was not part of the plan", I was talking about the purpose of the devshirme system and how it was not to convert the conquered lands, but now I reread it, and I see that I have made it sound like the devshirme boys were not converted. Sorry about that. Well of course they all aren’t Christian but what little I know seems consistent with the idea that the Sultan viewed the European land as an area to be “milked” for slaves and tribute Remembering that we started this whole conversation talking about the religion Islam and its "jihads" hell-bent on converting everyone to Islam, I would like to emphasize that the conquered lands were NOT converted to Islam in the times of the Ottoman Empire. Yes, tax was collected, and yes, boys were selected and taken for education & service in military and bureaucracy, rising to very important posts. However, there was NO forced conversion to Islam, which is why Europe east of Vienna is not Muslim right now. What do you expect, though? We are talking about lands that were fought over and conquered, centuries ago. If it were today, they would have installed a puppet government and argued the prisoners are not POWs or something <g> But it was then, not now, and so quite a few things we consider inhuman now were quite normal in a conquered land. Mass conversions would have posed a problem Really? Roman Empire did mass conversions (or death) for a long time. People do convert quite easily when they are given death as the only other option, it seems. I do not claim to know why exactly Ottoman Empire did not convert the conquered lands to Islam. I am only giving this as a counterexample to what you have said here: Remember the Muslims conquered largely Christian lands. Now these lands are predominantly Muslim Message 18394190 the few first hand experiences I have had with Greeks, Serbs Croats and Romanians all uniformly have had an abiding loathing of the Turks. I don't know about that "abiding loathing", but it would not surprise me. The conquered never really loves the conquerer, I guess... >>>They conquered, and then got the tax. They did not forcibly convert<<< Constantly taxed to destitution and enslavement, humiliated in the good times and massacred in the bad, I guess we just have a different idea of what force means. Have I in some way suggested that they were nice? I only said Ottomans did not forcibly convert the lands they conquered to Islam. That's all. I doubt if we have a different idea of what force means. But perhaps we should remember that we were talking about CONVERTING to Islam by force, and not about the other stuff that happened when a land got conquered. The jizya was collected in some places up until the beginning of the twentieth century. Ottoman Empire lasted until the end of WWI, so yes, it would not surprise me if they managed to collect taxes until then. Still, are you suggesting that taxes are inhuman treatment? If so, I suggest you take a look at some of the more creative methods of inflicting pain on conquered lands that other empires implemented. Anyway, I hope that I have been able to make the point that it is not true that Muslims always converted Christian lands they have conquered.

To: lurqer who wrote (11070)	1/6/2003 9:24:12 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

The Sacred Geometry Of Chance January 6, 2003 ContraryInvestor.com Market Observations The Hidden Law Of A Probable Outcome...Well there you have it. 2002 was indeed the third consecutive down year for the DJIA in many a moon. And just when so many of the Street's highly paid visionary cognoscenti had predicted quite an opposite outcome just twelve short months ago. The Lords and Ladies of the venerable Barron's Roundtable were simply blindsided, now weren't they? And the cacophonous consensus of the Ruykeser elves in the early part of last year once again suggest to us that perhaps the most productive interludes for investment thinking are often spent within the context of silence. Of course it simply goes without saying that we will now be treated to the roars of Wall and Broad that a fourth consecutive down year is a near impossibility. As you will see in the following chart, there have only been four times in the prior 105 calendar year history of the DJIA that three consecutive down years have occurred. But there has only been one four year consecutive period price decline. And that decline came during 1929 through 1932. A period characterized by economic depression. An economic characterization academically dissimilar to the picture painted by current governmental economic statistics. Chart of DJIA Annual Price Performance (1897 - 2002) click on link for rest of article... safehaven.ca