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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Perspective who wrote (43663)	12/30/2005 5:32:05 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Java? It's So Nineties Sun's groundbreaking programming language vaulted to popularity with Web developers. But now it's losing ground to a raft of upstarts businessweek.com .... Implications to IBM BEAS MSFT and others

To: Perspective who wrote (43663)	12/30/2005 5:51:56 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Remember Ahmad Chalabi? The DOD's pet Iraqi ex pat, convicted in Jordan of bank fraud, accused of selling Iraqi provisional government secrets to Iran, accused of counterfiting Iraqi currency and head of the party that won a meager 1% of the vote in this month's election? With those bona fides, no wonder he's landed a plumb job. Chalabi Named Iraq Oil Minister NEW YORK - Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi has added another hat, and no small chapeau at that: He was named interim oil minister of the war-torn nation. forbes.com

To: Perspective who wrote (43663)	12/30/2005 6:21:19 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

There is one line of arguments that I meant to put in but did not. Do I have the following example correct? Assume for a second a subdivision of one hundred houses all priced at $250,000. Assume that 2 households in that subdivision make $80,000. Assume 48 households make something in excess of $80,000. Assume the remaining 48 households make close to $20,000. The median income is $80,000 but 48% of the people in the subdivision have way more than stretched their housing budget to buy that $250,000 home with no money down have they not. Medians and averages can play tricks. But considering that close to 70% of the population owns their own home and given that pay raises have not exactly be equitable or evenly distributed over these past few years, especially in light of rising costs elsewhere, one can only wonder the actual percentage of people in the median priced home that really can afford to pay that median price. That is what a negative savings rate as well as cash out refis to support consumption both show. Mish