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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Earl who wrote (16275)	1/26/2003 5:31:43 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78708

OT - Don, the US military has had 10 years to do nothing but map every single fortified position in Iraq, down to the millimeter. Anything there that can't move will be obliterated by precision-guided bunker-busting bombs long before a single US soldier gets near enough to worry about fortifications. Any troop concentration in the open will also be hit. If bunkers aren't safe and you can't stay out in the open, what's left? Remember we enter this campaign with complete air and sea superiority. The biggest danger will be mobile artillery and rockets that don't use their radars long enough to be tracked. But the net effect will be stinging bees attacking an elephant. Patton once said that fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of mankind. Saddam loves his palaces and bunkers; if we go to war (which I am not crazy about either) he won't have much longer to enjoy them. JMHO.

To: Don Earl who wrote (16275)	1/26/2003 9:25:36 AM
From: TimbaBear	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78708

Don Earl So, to restate what I think is your idea here: You're thinking about playing VTS as a hedge against long term production shut-down in Iraq. If this occurred, then other sources would need to be brought on line to stabilize the prices. As this event unfolds, more demand for the type of formation mapping that VTS provides will mean more demand for VTS services. The perception of increased revenue for VTS would (most likely) cause an increase in the price of VTS stock price, which is what you would be making the play in anticipation of. So it wouldn't necessarily be that VTS would intrinsically be worth more (because they appear to lose money at what they do), it would be playing more toward "The Greater Fool Theory"? I tend to agree with your suspicions that this administration hasn't really provided their actual reasons for this movement against Iraq, and I also tend to believe that catastrophe often awaits when the Generals (or others) make light of the chances of the "enemy" to resist. However, isn't there another company that can be used for this hedging that would also provide the margin of safety of current profitability in case the scenario does not play out with a long term reduction in oil production? Timba

To: Don Earl who wrote (16275)	1/26/2003 1:59:47 PM
From: jeffbas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78708

Don, I think that after an unknown amount of time, relating to how much damage is done to the oilfields and how antiquated the equipment is, the number one priority of the administration will be to pump the heck out of the oil fields. The only way to make this work, both in Iraq and for the world economy, is to materially improve the lot of the Iraqi people and materially reduce the "tax" that high energy prices effectively amount to. Bush wants to get reelected and if the economy is no better in a year, he won't, in my opinion. The following article is an interesting observation on the net effects of tax changes at all levels. nj.com Bush is, in my opinion, out of touch with the middle class and is in a perilous political position. I doubt he even knows that most of the middle class will get little or nothing out of the dividend tax cut, as their dividend paying stocks are held in 401-k's or they are subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax. I stick with my long held view that Bush may go down as the Herbert Hoover of the 21st Century.