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To: Rational who wrote (9607)	11/27/1997 2:03:00 PM
From: Joseph G.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18056

Sankar << But, most of the investment is tied to retirement mutual funds.>> Is that true, to any degree? What do you mean by "most": 10%, 7%? Did some angry bull contact your Dean by any chance? -g- Joe

To: Rational who wrote (9607)	11/27/1997 4:48:00 PM
From: Mark Adams	Respond to of 18056

You said Now, we are in a deflationary environment! Techs are suffering partly because of their lower debt:equity ratios. Utilities are going up partly because of their high debt:equity ratios. This is non-sequitar. Deflation is bad for debt holder- they have to pay off debt with dollars worth more than they borrowed. IMO, Utilities are gaining as part of a defensive rotation to stocks with some yield (despite higher risks due to deregulation and stranded costs). Tech stocks have returned to 'saner' valuations but may have further room to drop. Tech stocks provide little dividend yield (for the most part).

To: Rational who wrote (9607)	11/27/1997 9:42:00 PM
From: Joan Osland Graffius	Respond to of 18056

Sankar, >>Lower interest rates reduce a company's cost of capital, and make more disposable cash available to consumers. It is my opinion this current economy has much less "old industrial" type companies and we need to look at different economic evaluations. For example software companies today are contributing more and more to our domestic economy. We are seeing businesses with out large expensive manufacturing facilities, high shipping costs, etc. The software companies basically have intellectual property and a few software engineers. Where do you find this in the overall economic models and balance sheets. So cost of capital and all these other things folks look at are becoming less relevent, at least in the sense they used to be. It also is my opinion the software industry is what is giving us this increased productivity in our economy. The productivity improvement is coming from decrease cost of manufacturing and shipping products like software and even more improvement will come as we all download these products on the internet and eliminate the shipper. I think we are in an information age and old industrial economic models just don't fit some of the new industries which are fueling the growth of this countries economy. Joan

To: Rational who wrote (9607)	11/27/1997 9:48:00 PM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18056

Sankar Are you saying that avoiding deflations and recessions are just a matter of having the right agreements between nations? I think many people have problems with what you're proposing because it sounds like something for nothing. At the bottom level, a bunch of people people invested in the wrong things, built the wrong houses, built the wrong plants, hired too many people. And we may have to pay for empty houses, underutilized plants, and useless workers. Is that or is that not what happened in Asia? And if that is what happened, how can we possibly help them without, at some level, hurting ourselves?