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Non-Tech : Auric Goldfinger's Short List -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StockDung who wrote (11218)	3/9/2003 12:00:14 PM
From: afrayem onigwecher	Read Replies (21) \| Respond to of 19428

WAR'S NO QUICK FIX FOR MARKET By TERRY KEENAN -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- March 9, 2003 -- BE careful what you wish for. I recalled that old saw earlier this week as I watched reporters on the nightly newscasts jump from one global hot spot to the next. From Iraq to Turkey to North Korea to Pakistan the programs had no problem filling 22 minutes with troubling news from afar. It wasn't long ago that many in the media were lamenting the demise of international news coverage and the unending focus on more parochial and pedestrian events, like the Gary Condit investigation. But like most bull market concerns, this, too, is a "worry" we can now safely cross off our lists. Good thing, because the list of new worries is expanding every day. Take, for example, one foreign story you haven't heard a peep about in the popular press: the painful and persistent bear markets in the rest of the civilized world. While Wall Street has continued its slow-motion slide again this year, it pales in comparison to the pain being felt around the globe. Markets in Britain, France, Germany and Japan have flat-out cratered. Most of Europe's bourses are now trading at seven-year lows. Germany's D-J Index has lost 70 percent of its value. Japan's Nikkei is at levels we haven't seen in two decades. We all know the conventional wisdom as to why Wall Street is now in its fourth losing year in a row: 9/11, Enron, the cost of war with Iraq, WorldCom. But if it was that simple, you have to wonder why markets such as France and Germany - which have been immune to such factors - have fallen faster and farther than stock markets in the U.S? It also throws cold water on the notion that "when the bombs drop, stocks will pop," a conviction that suggests that Baghdad is the only thing that's in the way of a new bull market. No, the bear market was well in place before the Bush administration even put Saddam Hussein in its bull's-eye - just look at the charts. A swift victory in Iraq will surely remove a cloud - but it's unlikely to reverse the primary trend right away. Rather, history tells us it is far more likely that investor bearishness around the world reflects the reality of new global threats, a breakdown of long-term alliances and renewed trade wars. In the 1930s, after a decade of isolationism and prosperity, global tensions flared and global markets flamed out. Perhaps Wall Street needs to look at the late 1930s rather than the early 1990s when making its war-time comparisons. TERRY KEENAN is senior business correspondent and anchor of Cashin' In, an investing program that appears on Fox News Channel on Saturday mornings at 11:30. E-mail terry.keenan@foxnews.com.