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Pastimes : Ask Mohan about the Market -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Defrocked who wrote (12386)	12/26/1997 11:42:00 AM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18056

Defrocked, you are shocked? The recent 3 trillion injection in preferred to the banking system is designed to hide similar problems. It is quite strange for a nation that used to have its nobles commit hara kiri in face of disgrace to have them commit "Hide a Kiri" in their corporate world. Apparently, the approach of cutting the gangrenous limb to let the rest of the body survive and thrive is not acceptable, but many physicians will tell you that this is in some cases the only remedy. Until they face their own "S&L crisis" and write down what needs to be written down, I am afraid that the Japanese economy will just limp along. The problem is, of course, that in the absence of a drastic cure for their malaise, the Nikkei will bounce only so many times from the critical 14,000 and one of these days it will crash trough. Of course, to avoid facing reality, the bean counters there are changing the method of valuation from "market" to "book value", and book value, my friend, can be made what you want it to be. It includes real estate valued at the acquisition price (while the current market value might be half as much) it includes good wills, it includes games with depreciation rates etc. in short it is a figment of an imaginative accountant's imagination. Yet, that new ruling will possibly remove the 14,000 as a treshold that needs to be defended whatever comes (so far) and thus it is almost assured it will be breached. Zeev