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Strategies & Market Trends : Graham and Doddsville -- Value Investing In The New Era -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: porcupine --''''> who wrote (1455)	3/13/1999 1:13:00 AM
From: porcupine --''''>	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

Japanese Economy Shrinks Again TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's economy shrank for a record fifth straight quarter, the government said Friday in a report likely to increase pressure for efforts to propel the economy out of its worst recession in 50 years. The announcement of the 0.8 percent drop in gross domestic product in the October-December quarter came as a government panel approved a 7.5 trillion yen ($62.5 billion) bailout package on Friday for 15 of its largest banks. The bad-loan cleanup, using taxpayer money, is the cornerstone of a government plan to pull the country out of its worst recession since World War II. The figures on GDP -- the measure of all goods and services produced in the country -- showed that the economy will shrink 3.2 percent in the 1998-99 fiscal year if the pace continues. That would mark the first time the Japanese economy has contracted for two fiscal years in a row since the end of World War II. The economy shrank by 0.7 percent for the 1997-98 fiscal year, which ended March 31, in the first full-year decline since 1974. For the July-September 1998 quarter, the GDP contracted 0.3 percent. The dismal show is likely to set off calls for Tokyo to do more to turn the economy around, said Kenneth Landon, senior currency strategist at Deutsche Bank in Tokyo. ''The fact that these figures were so much worse than expected leads me to believe that the government has underestimated the economy's weakness up until now,'' Landon said. Government officials, however, played down the need for more action. ''The Cabinet is proceeding with every conceivable policy measure. We're starting to see results here and there,'' said chief government spokesman Hiromu Nonaka. With unemployment at a record high 4.4 percent and a credit crunch squeezing companies, the Japanese government has already earmarked 81.9 trillion yen ($682.5 billion) in the budget for the next fiscal year for public works spending, tax cuts and other stimulus measures. In one sign of good news, a research company said Friday that corporate bankruptcies were down last month. Plunging 40 percent compared to a year earlier, the number of bankruptcies dropped below 1,000 for the first time in six years, Teikoku Data Bank said. Bankruptcies have fallen since October, when a loan-guarantee system for small and medium-sized companies was set up. Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said the massive bank bailout would put the financial industry -- hobbled by at least 70 trillion yen ($584 billion) in bad loans -- on track to recovery. ''With the injection of public funds, we are now about to achieve stability in the financial system,'' he said, adding that the economy ''may now have turned the corner.'' But analysts said things were unlikely to get better soon. Brian Rose, chief economist at Warburg Dillon Read in Tokyo, said he expected the economy to continue to shrink for at least another two years. Jeffrey Young, an economist at Salomon Smith Barney in Tokyo, said he also remained cautious. ''The economy is still very, very fragile,'' he said.

To: porcupine --''''> who wrote (1455)	3/14/1999 6:23:00 PM
From: porcupine --''''>	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

Berkshire Report Sheds No Light On Silver By Derek J. Caney NEW YORK (Reuters) - Warren Buffett couldn't have covered his tracks any better on his silver position than he did in his Berkshire Hathaway annual report issued Saturday, in which he offered no new information regarding a position he announced in early February 1998. Berkshire Hathaway had nothing specific to say about the silver position as it now stands. In its report issued over the Internet Saturday, it grouped silver along with its other ''unconventional investments,'' as reported in its 1997 annual report, which also included crude oil and U.S. treasuries. A year ago, Berkshire Hathaway announced that it had purchased 129.7 million ounces of silver for London delivery. The announcement caused silver prices to soar to nearly $8 an ounce, its highest level since the early 1980s. The spot bullion price for London delivery is currently hovering around $5.30 an ounce. Saturday the company said, ''We can report ... that we have eliminated certain of the positions discussed last year and added certain others.'' The company report said the only reason Berkshire disclosed its silver position in 1998, which by some estimates accounted for 20 percent of total silver supply, was that ''questions about our silver position that we had received from regulatory authorities led us to believe that they wished us to publicly acknowledge this investment. ''Normally ... we see no advantage in talking about specific investment actions. Therefore -- unless we again take a position that is particularly large -- we will not post you as to what we are doing in respect to any specific holding of an unconventional sort.''