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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Teri Skogerboe who wrote (17692)	3/13/1998 9:22:00 PM
From: JMD	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Teri, all. About 2 months ago, Barton Biggs (morgan stanley, jp morgan-forget which and I'm in a hurry) was in on a Barron's Round Table discussion and suggested that Japan was becoming "the Italy" of Asia and calmly prognosticated that the world's 2nd largest economy was very likely to surrender its leadership position to Taiwan, China--take your pick. I was shocked to read it then but the more time goes on, it seems more and more plausible to me. The optimistic scenario is that Japan won't crash but rather melt away as other stronger Asia hands take their place. I must say that in the vacuum of leadership seen thus far coupled with the absurd shenanigans we are seeing to prop up the Nikkei, Japan could be defaulting itself into second tier status. Certainly far stranger things have happened. Mike Doyle

To: Teri Skogerboe who wrote (17692)	3/13/1998 10:02:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Here's a story to give some of the bears something to lose sleep over... techweb.cmp.com ... Intel Corp., the chip industry's $25 billion gorilla, finally tossed its hat in the 300-mm ring by confirming that it had broken ground for a $1.5 billion 12-inch wafer fab in Hillsboro, Ore. When it is equipped in 2000, the facility initially will be used for process development. Two years later the chip giant plans to convert the 300-mm fab to a volume production operation and start turning out its next-generation microprocessors using 0.13-micron process technology, according to Intel officials in Santa Clara. On the heels of Intel's announcement, fab equipment giant Applied Materials Inc. confirmed that it had received a large, multi-technology order for 300-mm production tools to equip a $595-million pilot line planned by Siemens A.G. and Motorola Inc. in Dresden, Germany [Semiconductor Business News, 2/98, p. 28]. ...

To: Teri Skogerboe who wrote (17692)	3/13/1998 10:53:00 PM
From: Clarksterh	Respond to of 70976

Teri - Thanks for the correction. I missed it the first time. I would have never believed it otherwise. It is just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard of: 1) It rewards the holders of equity, who are supposed to take the most risks. Thereby it totally undermines the stockholders incentive to do Due Dilligence (sp?) and weed out the bad companies. 2) It is completely useless. Spitting in Niagara Falls would have more effect. It is very similar to the problem of the Indonesian currency boards. Unless they can buy every stock, or at least a very large fraction thereof, it will just get undone soon thereafter. Thanks again. Keep up these kinds of posts and maybe I'll become a bear ;) Clark