To: Jurgen Trautmann who wrote (3811 ) 9/5/1998 7:34:00 PM From: MonsieurGonzo Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Jurgen; RE:" Chit-Chat "Message 5660203 crash rather than a correction . As kapital flows are no longer supportive, it can no longer be a so-called "bull market". But to label this process of decline a "bear market" is to imply some sort of recession or, a business cycle contraction , neither of which is true, IMHO.fundamentally de-valued. Post-WWII Americans, for the most part, being BabyBoomers such as myself - grew up in an inflationary world order. That we called the first signs of de-flation -- "dis-inflation denial . FWIW, the second reaction is usually anger .up in cost - despite the fact that demand continues to be weak, and raw material supplies are in a surplus state. Though the kost of kapital is declining, there is little if any rationale to invest to expand production capacity, as a means of reducing costs of goods sold. This affects profit margins in such a way that the likely response is to reduce labour costs.dis-employment arises as a result of consolidations , where companies are merged or acquired and "surplus labour" is eliminated; but this ("down-sizing") has been going on for some years now, and is nothing new: for the most part, "down-sized" (American) labour has been able to find employment else where.dis-employment will probably take two forms: "out-sourcing", which means things like substituting "in-direct" personnel and/or specialist companies for full-time employees and/or integrated operations; and, "globalization of labour", the so-called big sucking sound as American jobs go off-shore, where labour is relatively less expensive. Ironically, if one can "tele-commute" from a "home-office", an American worker sitting at some network node in a cubicle can be replaced globally by someone sitting off a network node in Hong Kong, for example.if production is even sustainable at current levels - and one could make the case that it is not... That, not unlike a real depression , the surplus is so massive, that even "out-sourcing" and "globalization of labour" will be minimal. In this worst case scenario, industry has no exit - and capacities are idled rather than re-organized.third wave " towards becoming an "information economy " - we would be naive to think that such a fundamental change could occur without destroying a lot of what was before.
