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Pastimes : Home on the range where the buffalo roam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sig who wrote (11023)	7/27/2003 11:36:19 PM
From: pbull	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13815

All I am saying is that interest rates won't stay at what is effectively zero. Fed governor William Poole of St. Louis referred to an "unwelcome decline" in inflation. And, yes, I agree the Fed always gets its way, so betting on a return of modest inflation does not seem to me to be "fighting the Fed" at this point. True, I do not know how Rydex plans to manage this fund. But their other leveraged offerings, particularly the ones designed to go in the opposite direction of the S&P or the Naz 100, were sensational in the bear market as low-risk macro bets. So I presume they short, through the futures markets, one or more liquid bond indexes. The risk? This was a money-losing bet for a long, long time in Japan. As with anything else, timing is everything. As for MSFT, my position is, and always has been, that having a monopoly is NOT in itself illegal. Abuse of monopoly power IS illegal. While it is true that Microsoft undermined potential competitors at every opportunity, it is much less clear that consumers were harmed by price gouging or some other activity that would indicate an abuse of power. I'm not convinced that MSFT is a bad corporate citizen, in other words, just a formidable competitor. Disclaimer: My opinion may be biased. At the grade school my nephew attends, their 6 old, worn-out Apple Computers were replaced last year with 25 brand-new Dells, at no expense to taxpayers, courtesy of the Bill Gates Foundation. So, yes, Gates is OK in my book. PB