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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (9132)	2/20/2003 5:00:32 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Respond to of 306849

thanks for that very interesting post Grace!!! I read in an old businessweek article that the 70s had an unexpected decline in productivity- this article made it seem like this was the key issue with the 70s. (forget the rest of the article, it was written in 2000 and has a bunch of new economy quips) And as if that weren't bad enough, the twin oil shocks of the '70s were accompanied by a sharp, still largely unexplained slowdown in productivity growth that plagued the economy into the mid-1990s. businessweek.com I definitely think the potential for a backlash against corporate greed exists, but if it happens I would say it would need to startup right about now. Reading SI you have the sense that everybody in the world considers the US corps to be corrupt and out to cheat the public, but so far the masses aren't really voting that way based on the last election. I don't want to let the few traders left on the internet sway me into thinking that this is CW among the masses, because the reality is that many of the people left here were bearish and had the same overall perspective all through the 90s and are something of a "broken clock". The future looks very, very good to me. I'm back to the gross margin sweet spot in that I'm getting paid for my time and I'm almost completely free of escalating facility expense that was strangling me just two years ago. Yes me too- I'm very happy with what I see happening to the companies in my business which is mostly on the software and content side of tech... balance sheets are really getting cleaned up and a lot of shoring up of the corps. The consolidation has been brutal which imo has gone a little too far but means pricing pressure will return. (I keep coming back to fewer listed companies on the naz than in 1982- that is a definite imbalance to me given the internet adoption and acceptance of naz market in general). Maybe the biggest difference is the consumer purchasing power improving vs. declining rapidly in the 70s that is the key difference then. I know in the 70s the planned obsolesense model and overpriced shoddy goods really had the public in a tizzy. Remember ford = found on road dead. In this recession, I have to say that other than my portfolio balance and paycheck, my standard of living has actually improved pretty dramatically. Stuff is so cheap, appliances and electronics, clothes, everything. BTW I also think food is getting cheaper, maybe not at the wholesale level but the distribution costs are going down and it is showing up at Safeway, at least here. I bought 2/1 chickens the other day, sea bass and some other great food for really cheap. I have a lot less money, and far fewer job prospects (for now) but I'm not really suffering. Maybe if I was in this funk and my expenses were escalating rapidly I'd be angry about it, who knows. BTW I think we're about 20-30% of the way done with the efficiences we can wring out of the supply chain for the global 2000 companies so these are NOT the cheapest prices you will see, unless retail decides to improve their margins which would be ok also. Sourcing is really the only technology improvement you are seeing right now... the whole logistics area (which account for 30% of cogs in some cases) is untapped as well as currency fluctuation optimization/money optimization using PSPs. So at least a few more years of better prices for consumers or better margins for stores. Lizzie