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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (12517)	10/16/2003 2:06:14 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793587

The republicans used to blame the stock market bubble for the carnage in the high tech industry, the problem with that is that here we are 3 years later and a bunch of the bubble stocks are back to their old highs with more revenues than they had in 2000. So the "bubble bursting" excuse doesn't really work. A handful of bubble survivors, maybe. The rest are penny stocks, or dead entirely. Go look for any class that soared in the bubble - ecommerce? web engines? internet consulting companies? telecom? and then go tell me if they are all back to their highs, those you can still find. As for the big hi-techs, the very best of them are trading now for half or less what they traded for then. Microsoft traded at a split-adjusted 60. Today it's 29. Sun traded at 60. Today it's 3. Cisco traded at 80. Today it's 21. Dell traded at 58. Today it's 36. And these are the best companies, the ones who not only survived but outperformed (well maybe not Sun). Look at the market: The Nasdaq topped out over 5000 in March 2000. Today it's 1950. No, we didn't just have a "bubble". We had a full-bore, devil-take-the-hindmost mania. Tulip city. The workout after such a mania is not quick, and frankly I'm amazed that it hasn't been even worse than it has been. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. There's very little a sitting President can do about a stock market boom and bust and its effects on the economy, one way or the other. The Fed Chairman has more influence, but it's still limited.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (12517)	10/16/2003 4:26:39 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793587

Sounds like you are living in Silicon Valley. Yep, things have been a lot tougher the last three years. Ask me, I dropped a bundle! (sob) Bush almost lost an election that should have been a "slam dunk" for the Republicans because of his lack of charm. I think the candidate for the Dems that may learn how to campaign and win is Clark. He is their best chance, IMO.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (12517)	10/16/2003 9:15:54 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 793587

Lizzy.......Wonder how many of the folks in the age group you mentioned realized they were WAY overpriced salary wise in a very permissive tech world prior to 2000??? I had been a recruiter for over 20 years, and had seen many rise-and-falls of the economy. NEVER previously, did a group of young folks come to the market place with such an inflated sense of salary-worth! Many of them took lower salaries, but demanded stock options. The young growing companies couldn't afford the salaries, so accommodated them. Internationally, the recruiters started seeing hiring slowing down, then stopping, except for the 500 or so worldwide gurus who could and did get the high salaries. By SEPTEMBER 2000, our several thousand member International Association was openly talking in our literature about the coming financial problems. Companies first start slowing down hiring, then freeze hiring, then start layoffs. We were well on our way by the start of 2000 for the start of this process. As you know, this was MONTHS before the 2000 election, and of course, before Bush was elected. We'd better all hope that the tax and spend folks don't continue doing that, or it will once again, stop new business growth. We must have new business growth, or we will have no new jobs. The Government doesn't make jobs. It only takes funds from those who have capital. Do you know that many working people, say 30s-40s? These people, which is the typical group of friends of mine, are doing much much worse under Bush than they did under Clinton. Clinton had an optimism about him that encouraged capex expenditures and hiring from our largest companies. Bush is the opposite, he peddles fear. We haven't had any capex expenditures nor will we have any in 04, nothing meaningful anyway. The employment statistics are only relevant as far as "jobless claims" and who is working, whether it be at Safeway or Lucent or Cisco. It doesn't tell you who used to make 100K and now only makes $38K.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (12517)	10/16/2003 10:17:43 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793587

Message 19409489

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (12517)	10/17/2003 1:41:00 AM
From: D. Long	Respond to of 793587

There was a huge frenzied bubble through the 90s, Lizzy, and the only bubble companies that have survived are established, hard-product, infrastructure companies - Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, Oracle, etc. And even they are trading well below their highs. The reason there isn't any big capital expenditures is because the country is over-built. Telecoms laid hundreds of miles of dark fiber over the past decade in anticipation of demand that hasn't materialized. There was an over-build on dedicated hosting facilities, many of which are now being sold at cut-rate prices (and my current profitable employer is snatching up greedily). There is so much excess hardware and facilities floating on the market today from bottom-up IPO bubble-kings that you could slap a whole company together at foreclosure prices. As to salaries, they were over-priced, like everything else. College graduates with zero experience getting $80,000 with options and a Benz? To be a code monkey? That isn't rational. Coding jobs and call center jobs are moving to India, where equally skilled workers can do the job cheaper. That's a trend that was starting before the bubble burst - it was a complaint already in 1998. Fact of the matter is tech is over-built and over-supplied with labor. Like the oil and gas glut of the 80s, we're in a correction. Derek