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.

Microcap & Penny Stocks : Rat dog micro-cap picks... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bucky Katt who wrote (13956)	9/11/2003 3:04:42 PM
From: Fudd	Respond to of 48461

William, JMAR seems to be another that keeps going up. Great call as usual and thanks.

To: Bucky Katt who wrote (13956)	9/11/2003 3:05:47 PM
From: tsigprofit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 48461

Make no mistake: The weak job market is not business as usual. This time's different Make no mistake: The weak job market is not business as usual. September 11, 2003: 2:59 PM EDT By Justin Lahart, CNN/Money Senior Writer NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The job market should have started getting better by now. But it hasn't. The latest weekly jobless claims report <http://money.cnn.com/2003/09/11/news/economy/jobless/index.htm> was just another reminder of that unsettling fact. In the week ended Sept. 6, 422,000 people filed for employment benefits -- more than the 400,000 economists expected and the worst reading since early summer. This comes on top of last week's lousy employment report, which showed the economy lost another 93,000 jobs in August, instead of gaining some back like economists thought it would. All this in the midst of an economy that is growing at something like a 4.5 percent pace in the current quarter. On Wall Street, there has been a tendency lately to look past the bad job news. Yes, it is worrisome, because it could be an eventual drag on consumer spending, but since everything else is going gangbusters we need not worry to much. "Right now, investors feel like we're on the cusp of something," said Miller Tabak strategist Pete Boockvar. "Historically, employment's been a lagging indicator. Other areas of the economy point to growth, suggesting that at some point employment is going to pick up." Out of the blue But the problem is that while employment has always been a lagging indicator, it has never lagged by so much. Up until the 1990-91 recession, jobs tended to start bouncing back right around when the economy bottomed out. And even during the "jobless recovery" of the early 1990s employment began bouncing back sooner than it has this time around. For economists this is a surprise. Consider: At the end of last year economists polled by the Philadelphia Fed thought that the economy would grow by 2.6 percent this year -- right where the latest survey by Blue Chip Economic Forecasts puts it. But at the end of last year economists thought that the jobless rate would finish out the year at 5.6 percent. The current rate is 6.1 percent and nobody expects it to drop by too much anymore. So something very different is happening, and nobody is quite sure exactly what. Many are quick to blame the loss of U.S. jobs to workers overseas, for example, but while this is certainly an element of what's going on, it's hardly a new dynamic. Remember U.S. auto workers taking sledge hammers to Toyotas in the early 1980s? In a recent report, economists at the New York Fed suggest that what is happening is structural. In past recessions job losses were far more cyclical: The economy turned down, your company laid you off, but as soon as things got better you got hired back. Much of this was because manufacturing was a greater part of the economy, and manufacturers are less likely to sever their relationship with an employee than service industries are. And of course, service workers are far less likely to have a union representing them than manufacturing workers, making it easier for an employer to restructure and drop them permanently from the rolls. Another possibility: Growth in productivity is making it so that companies simply aren't going to need to hire until the economy has been growing at a strong clip for some time. Thanks in part to improved technologies, companies have found that they are able to do more with less. "Productivity gains have been strong in the current period, allowing the economy to recover without creating jobs," said Don Fine, president of Fine Financial Forecasting. Or maybe, suggests Deutsche Bank economist Cary Leahey, it's that firms are far more gun shy than in the past. They have been treated to a number of false economic starts, after all, and many are still licking their wounds from overreaching in the late 1990s and from the accounting scandals that hit last year. So while in past cycles some companies were quick to hire, because this was seen as a way to get a leg up on competition and grab market share during the next expansion, now they're milling around, waiting. All the seasick sailors "Companies aren't afraid of being left in the dust; they're afraid that if they go first they'll be eaten by sharks," said Leahey. "Everybody is standing in front of the turnstile, and nobody wants to go through." For Goldman Sachs chief U.S. economist Bill Dudley, it mostly comes down to growth. In the past the economy was much more cyclical and used to really rocket when it came out of recessions. This time has been different, partly because of changes in the makeup of the economy, but also because working off the excesses of the late 1990s has taken time. "I don't think it's so much that the labor market is different so much as it is the difficulty policymakers have had in generating fast enough growth," he said. "We're only getting rapid growth now, almost two years into the recovery." Most economists think that the growth spurt we're seeing now is so strong that it will be able to beat back whatever it is that's inhibiting job creation. Productivity alone won't be enough to meet the surge in demand. Companies will come to see upping their payrolls as an asset rather than a liability and new jobs will be created, replacing the ones that have disappeared. But while it all seems to work out on paper, there's still a fair amount of worry in the economics community. So far the job market doesn't seem to have been listening to its forecasts.

To: Bucky Katt who wrote (13956)	9/12/2003 2:46:02 PM
From: xcr600	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 48461

SATC very nice.. time for some backfilling and consolidating. Now if I could get RTK to pull the same. On another note, duh... Blair told Iraq invasion would increase terror risk It has been revealed British Prime Minister Tony Blair was told by his top intelligence advisers a month before the war in Iraq began that an invasion of the country would increase the risk of terrorist attacks. The confidential assessment of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in February this year was that Al Qaeda and associated groups presented by far the greatest terrorist threat to western interests, a threat that would be heightened by military action against Iraq. The JIC assessment also concluded that the collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological weapons ending up in the hands of terrorists. That appears to contradict the argument presented by Britain, the United States and Australia, that the world needed to act against Iraq in order to prevent rogue states passing weapons of mass destruction onto terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. In ignoring their warnings, Tony Blair told his intelligence chiefs war could provoke the very thing you were trying to avoid but he believed it was too risky to do nothing. abc.net.au ---------------------------------------- SEPTEMBER 10, 2003 COMMENTARY By Howard Gleckman The Neatest Thing about That $87 Billion Bush and congressional leaders plan to treat the Iraq spending as if it were off-budget, pretending they're not creating red ink Time to follow Alice for another quick trip down Washington's rabbit hole. Just take a look at what's about to happen with President Bush's request for $87 billion to continue U.S. military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush will get the money from Congress, all right. But that's where things will begin to get strange. The President and congressional leaders are going to try to make $87 billion in federal spending disappear. How? By treating it as if it were off-budget spending. Here's how: For fiscal year 2004, which begins on Oct. 1, Bush has insisted that Congress hold discretionary spending -- that is, all expenses except for programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt -- to $784.7 billion, and not a penny more. From now until Thanksgiving, the White House and Congress will do battle over every cent. VETO THREATS. Lawmakers will try to squeeze as much extra spending as possible into that target. And the President will insist that exceeding his cap by just one dollar will jeopardize the nation's economic future. Said the Office of Management & Budget on Sept. 4: "Only within such a fiscal environment can we encourage increased economic growth and a return to a balanced budget." Expect veto threats and perhaps even veiled warnings of a government shutdown if that $784.7 billion spending cap isn't met. There's just one problem. While Bush and Congress are fighting over every dollar, they're going to pretend the $87 billion in Iraq money doesn't count as part of the discretionary budget ceiling, even though every thing else the Pentagon does is included. This is an accounting gimmick that would shame even Enron. "We will hold down spending," Bush and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill will say. But next to that boast will be a little imaginary asterisk that says, "For everything, that is, but Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, a fistful of trust funds, and the war in Iraq." In truth, the government will spend more than $1.3 trillion next year -- close to twice the discretionay-spending target -- on stuff that doesn't count in Washington's debates over fiscal responsibility. REAL DEBT. Watch for Bush to claim by the end the year that he held discretionary outlays to a 4% hike, even though spending will go up by close to 15%. The White House and Congress will just pretend it didn't happen. And how will Uncle Sam pay for all these extra burdens? With real money that Treasury will have to borrow, creating real debt that your kids will be paying off for the rest of their lives. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Senior Correspondent Gleckman covers fiscal policy for BusinessWeek in Washington Edited by Douglas Harbrecht