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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (43799)	3/20/2009 5:59:31 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95536

Today’s decline trimmed gains in the market’s first back- to-back weekly advance of the year. The S&P 500 had rebounded as much as 17 percent from a 12-year low on March 9 bloomberg.com Deficit forecast to hit $1.8 Trillion online.wsj.com Anyone need some Lehman-logo stress balls? bloomberg.com In Europe...industrial production is down 12 percent from a year ago. In Brazil, it has fallen 15 percent; in Taiwan, a staggering 43 percent. Even in China, which has become the workshop of the world, production growth has slowed, with exports falling more than 25 percent and millions of factory workers being laid off... While manufacturing equals about 14 percent of gross domestic product in the United States, it totals 18 percent worldwide, and accounts for 33 percent of G.D.P. in China, according to the World Bank. That means that China, Brazil, India and other fast-growing emerging market countries that have escaped the worst of the fallout from the credit crisis will increasingly suffer, dragging down demand in more advanced Western economies even as government-led stimulus packages kick in. The damping effect works both ways. nytimes.com Galbraith: No return to normal: For the first time since the 1930s, millions of American households are financially ruined. Families that two years ago enjoyed wealth in stocks and in their homes now have neither. Their 401(k)s have fallen by half, their mortgages are a burden, and their homes are an albatross. For many the best strategy is to mail the keys to the bank. This practically assures that excess supply and collapsed prices in housing will continue for years... Geithner's banking plan would prolong the state of denial. It involves government guarantees of the bad assets, keeping current management in place and attempting to attract new private capital... Paulson faced two insuperable problems. One was quantity: there were too many bad assets...The other problem was price. The only price at which the assets could be disposed of, protecting the taxpayer, was of course the market price. In the collapse of the market for mortgage-backed securities and their associated credit default swaps, this price was too low to save the banks. But any higher price would have amounted to a gift of public funds... Delay is not innocuous. When a bank's insolvency is ignored, the incentives for normal prudent banking collapse. Management has nothing to lose. It may take big new risks, in volatile markets like commodities, in the hope of salvation before the regulators close in. Or it may loot the institution-"nomenklatura privatization", as the Russians would say-through unjustified bonuses, dividends, and options. It will never fully disclose the extent of insolvency on its own... the government must take control of insolvent banks, however large, and get on with the business of reorganizing, re-regulating, decapitating, and recapitalizing them. Depositors should be insured fully to prevent runs, and private risk capital (common and preferred equity and subordinated debt) should take the first loss. Effective compensation limits should be enforced-it is a good thing that they will encourage those at the top to retire... washingtonmonthly.com