Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: orkrious who wrote (253701)	8/2/2003 12:50:07 PM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

2.4 % GDP growth trumpeted by the thieves and swindlers went into useless or spendable defense item. Defense orders contributed 1.7% annualized to GDP growth. Without the defense item GDP would have been a meager 0.7% annualized growth bordering on recession, not to mention that leaving out the hedonics mostly for computing, there would be no GDP growth at all. It is just sickening that they close an useful site for preventing terror by the Pentagon, but boast on all networks of the US economic recovery from manufacturing items of death ... bullets, projectiles, bombs, cruise missiles etc. Something is very very wrong with the US society talking heads are celebrating the manufacture of items to kill other people. Would not mind and it is essential we should be able to defend ourselves, but from that to celebrate a recovery by manufacturing ammunition and other items of destruction and death is saddening. Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Simula Inc., the largest maker of ceramic plates for bullet-proof vests worn by U.S. troops, doubled production in the second quarter, while Alliant Techsystems Inc. added workers to make more bullets for the Army as the military spent to keep its soldiers in Iraq supplied. U.S. defense contractors are benefiting from a 44 percent annualized increase in military spending in the second quarter, the biggest rise since the Korean War. Purchases to meet everyday needs of soldiers helped the economy expand at a stronger-than- expected 2.4 percent annual rate, the government said Thursday. ``I think the impact you saw in this quarter is the consumable portion (of defense spending) -- ammunition, transportation, fuel,'' said Brett Lambert, a defense analyst at Washington-based DFI International. ``Those kinds of expenditures are hitting much more rapidly than the long-term procurement items are.'' The conflict in Iraq, where the U.S. has 148,000 troops, is costing an estimated $3.9 billion a month, while operations in Afghanistan are running at about $700 million a month, said Tom Baranauskas, defense budget analyst at Newton, Connecticut-based Forecast International Inc. ``Operational spending can be quite high to keep supplying whatever it takes to keep troops in the field fed and fueled,'' Baranauskas said.