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

To: Mike M2 who wrote (28166)	1/29/2003 7:04:51 PM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

mike, AOL took a big writedown $500Billion? 1995? That number sounds a tad too high. I would guess it was probably nearer $500M than $500B. The reason I say that is that I cannot find a loss in excess of $100B for a single year anywhere else in any other company or sector, so (just an educated guess on my part) this current year's loss by AOL Time Warner may be a record (excluding companies who are alleged to have engaged in financial chicanery). This is strictly anecdotal "evidence" though, as I most certainly have not researched it thoroughly enough to qualify as "accurate". <g> One thing is for certain. The loss is huge and the former Time Warner shareholders bear the brunt of the losses (real or imagined) as it now appears that AOL brought very little to the merger other than hopes, dreams and unrealized potential. As CobaltBlue pointed out in her response (sort of anyway), the world is going digital with broadband, high speed Internet access, while AOL currently markets dial-ups. Sooner or later, the other shoe will drop I guess... My only real fear here is that a loss of this magnitude could be the catalyst that sparks a severe market downturn. There's really no way to tell exactly how investors in other companies will react when they see the news on AOL Time Warner and then try to extrapolate factors that might affect their own holdings in unrelated equities. KJC