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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Amy J who wrote (67400)	3/17/2005 8:02:35 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77400

You know, Amy. All my predictions, including Cisco at $24 and another 10%+ return on the market this year, are coming into question because of this oil surge. I'm getting more and more worried each day that oil is going to sink this economy this year and put us into another recession. Very unfortunate. But that's what we get for enslaving ourselves to our Arab oil-masters and then hoping that they do what is best for the ours and the world's economy. We do so much to bust monopolies here in the U.S. and in Europe and we all put up with OPEC, the world's largest and most dangerous monopoly. Go figure. Once again, if I were President, I'd declare the U.S.'s oil dependence it's biggest national security threat and focus all my energy on getting us off that dependency. What a heroin-like addiction. It will be the ruin of this country one day.

To: Amy J who wrote (67400)	3/17/2005 8:26:06 AM
From: Dave	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

Hey Amy, RE: Economy, Taxes, and the Deficit While I do believe that the problems with Social Security, Medicare, and other Gov't entitlement programs are "real", in some ways I believe that the "deficit" issue is somewhat over-stated. Please read two more sentences before you "flame" away. We have seen two trends post 2000. 1. Most likely, the number of people filing taxes having "capital gains" has decreased dramatically. 2. Home ownership has grown and when one buys a house, one can write off 100% of their interest payments for quite a period of time (decade or two). Furthermore, going from recollection, when one sells their house, I believe up to $250,000 is "shielded" from taxes -- I'm not sure if AMT kicks in. These two factors have caused Tax revenues to decline dramatically, i.e. Tax revenues were over stated during the "bubble" years and Tax revenues are under stated post bubble given the rise in housing valuation on average and the increase in home ownership from 66% to 69%. Of course, while I can't "quantify" these two issues (I bet the IRS has a breakdown on taxes), Gov't spending has increased also. Gov't Spending in the 90's was growing at a rate of approximately 2.5% per annum. These figures include Bush Sr. & Clinton. Under the current Bush Administration, Gov't Spending is growing at over 5% per annum. While not condoning this spending or it's allocation, part of the reason why gov't spending is growing so fast is that Gov't spending acts as a "stabilizer" to the economy in general. Pretty much, when the economy sucks (my words), the gov't needs to spend more and incur deficits to ensure that the economy doesn't suck more. This may sound "counter-intuitive", but it worked in the past (FDR). The one problem with this now is that our deficits now are not "buying" real assets such as bridges, dams, or the like since we have already industrialized. Unfortunately, our deficits are basically "purchasing" intangible goods which "we" will not earn a return on in the future. Perhaps an alternative is to change the tax code giving the US Tax Payer a choice between either writing off the interest on their mortgage or selling ones house capital gain free. Later, Dave