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Biotech / Medical : Biotech Valuation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (8306)	5/8/2003 4:34:08 PM
From: Harold Engstrom	Respond to of 52153

(OT - continued:) Ian, can you explain how we are actually able to buy that 256M of DDR SDRAM for free sometimes (with rebates.) How does that benefit anyone except the consumer?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (8306)	5/8/2003 4:48:41 PM
From: keokalani'nui	Respond to of 52153

Ian-- I'm no economist. But it strikes me that A new product made better by innovation and sold at the same or lower price than the one you bought last week is not deflation. Not only is there no overcapacity, you can't keep them in stock. A decline in price in the SAME product, one identical to the one you bought last week, is unit deflation. When present as a structural economic force overall economic activity declines, consumers have less to spend, they wait to spend what they have until the price is lower, and debtors--especially those whose loans were underwritten against depreciating collateral and are full recourse (like homeowners, yeah?)--are toast. The banks don't get paid so they don't lend. People lose jobs. No jobs, no demand, thus overcapacity. Eventually and in retrospect it is called a depression, it is the worst of all economic worlds. As opposed to buying the latest graphics accelerator....which may enter the mythology of the Golden Age when stories come to be told around the tire fire.

To: Ian@SI who wrote (8306)	5/8/2003 5:52:00 PM
From: WhatsUpWithThat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 52153

OT: DRAM is an extreme example. In 1970, it cost about $4M for .25MB of core memory; today about 256MB of DDR SDRAM can be purchased for less than $100. Clearly, there's been impressive innovation contributing to lowered prices. Prices plummeted because Demand was overrun by Capacity. This incredible drop isn't a result of capacity increases. Demand/capacity imbalances have caused strong swings in RAM prices over the past 4 or 5 years, but nothing like you describe above. The drop in RAM from 1970 to today is far more a result of technology and manufacturing advances than anything. I mean, in 1970 RAM was iron core rings with copper wires running through them, some boards still hand-threaded though I think much was automated. I have one on my wall from 1974, a real piece of art: 16K RAM; the board is about 20" square and the core itself (folded out) is about 7x12. Had it framed when I decommissioned the computer it was in, in (really!) 1987. Cheers WUWT