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To: Lucretius who wrote (182)	5/8/1998 11:01:00 AM
From: RealMuLan	Respond to of 14427

Perhaps, it will take a long time for the trash stock of KTEL to go back to single digit. The reason for this: for each share of long, there probably has multiple shares of shorts out there. Somebody has run a pyramid scheme on this one. And I think the only reason for this dog hasn't gone to $100 is, perhaps, because SEC has forbidden to short KTEL after/since May 5. And I think SEC is the only one can bring this trash down. But who knows.

To: Lucretius who wrote (182)	5/8/1998 1:36:00 PM
From: Teddy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14427

It all makes sense now: (a snip) Why hasn't inflation exploded? Why haven't prices mushroomed for everything? Why is it that an employment rate of 4.3% doesn't scare me and send me scrambling for Barrick Resources (ABX:NYSE) calls? On CNBC's Squawk Box this morning I found out why, as I always do when I meet real businesspeople, the ones who determine costs and pricing in this country. Competition. Raw, no-holds-barred competition. It's not like we didn't have competition before, but today it's more ferocious than ever. It's global and almost instantaneous. Companies have to sprint to just stay in the game. And American companies are dominating this race. I know I can get caught up in the greatness of this country faster than most, and I always have to catch myself from jumping up and down when I hear the head of Fannie Mae (FNM:NYSE) talk about what his company has done, or when the chiefs at Dow Chemical (DOW:NYSE) discuss how to make Dow Chemical a great CHEMICAL company again. But one thing I insist being brought out with gusto is the ability of our economy to deliver more for the consumer at lower prices, provided the government lets the companies do so. One after another, in rapid-fire succession, companies talked about how they have taken costs out of their systems, allowing them to lower their prices. And I am not talking about price stability. I am talking about absolute price reductions. Dow's CEO has taken $2 billion in costs out of his production to stay profitable at a time when the plastics he makes, the true building blocks of a late '90s economy, are trending much lower despite the robust economy. Off-line the presidents of Tenneco (TEN:NYSE) and International Paper (IP:NYSE) shared with me their woes: pricing down 40% along most grades in absolute terms in the last 10 years. But the one that really struck me as genuinely different this time, is the reductions in electricity and natural gas prices that an outfit like Enron (ENE:NYSE) is bringing to the American industrial and consumer concerns. Ken Lay point blank said the prices of electricity and natural gas have come down 40% in areas where his company is allowed to go head to head with the old local monopolists. Think about that. How can we not have more purchasing power when our electric bill gets cut from $100 to $60, a month, a monster savings? And Enron is prepared to lower those costs for you wherever the regulators let them. As dramatic as these price reductions are, the pricing power being put at the hands of the consumer by the Internet, the subject of Thursday's Squawk, is far more dramatic. The Internet may be the reason why we can go to 3.5% unemployment and still have zero inflation. Because the Internet reduces the price of everything sold on it, sometimes by as much as, when it comes to telephony, 70% to 80%. I am continually astounded by the bargains and convenience of the Net. Last October, for example, I came down to Williamsburg, Va., for CNBC and scrambled in the morning to find a New York Times and a Wall Street Journal so I could be ready for the interviews. The Times was totally unavailable and I had to pay double for a Journal, which I could not get until 7 a.m. when the shop selling it opened. And I was lucky because had I come a few minutes later they would have been out of Journals....