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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ramsey Su who wrote (6076)	6/29/1998 1:17:00 AM
From: Katherine Derbyshire	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Somehow it's easier for me to believe that the LTC and Sumitomo numbers are unreliable (or incomplete) than that the finance ministers of the entire free world, including Japan, are wrong. (Even Japan concedes the $500B number.) Probable sources of unreliability include: loans being reported as collectible when in fact they are not, and therefore no reserves being held for these loans collateral and bank assets (like securities) being reported at substantially more than fair market value, and therefore a larger portion of loans being "secured" than is actually the case reserves for known bad debt that do not meet reasonable standards an uncomfortably large fraction of assets being illiquid (like real estate), and therefore not readily convertible to cash if depositors want their money. Lack of transparency and independent oversight in the financial system is blamed for both the creation of this problem in the first place and the lack of foreign competition in Japan. It would be completely consistent for LTC and Sumitomo's financial statements and recordkeeping to fall short of US standards. Katherine