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

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (1554)	4/13/1999 4:21:00 PM
From: porcupine --''''>	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1722

>>Thus, the AS claim that the undeniably longer periods of economic expansion of the post-WWII period are at best zero-sum, and must inevitably be paid for further down the road, is highly relevant to porx view.<< >>The US's worst deflation, up to that time, came in the 1890's. It was due to the fact that there wasn't enough gold to go around. It was relieved by new discoveries of gold, not by a reduction of productivity enhancements.<< Porc, Both of these indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of what Austrians think (as have many other posts.) Of course your usual well written prose addresses them in a highly impressive fashion. Unfortunately, it addresses ideas that are not AS ideas or miss the points they are trying to make about the weaknesses in the fractional reserve system and their relationship to prior poor economic results. I must be the worst writer in the world because despite more conversations that I can count you still don't understand what they are saying or how those issues are relevant to excesses that exist today in SE Asia and potentially in the U.S. too. You remain fixated on a view that you find offensive (and so would I) that isn't the Austrian view on how to address economic problems or what their cause is. I don't know whose view it is except that you enjoy criticizing it and attributing it to them. If I explain it an alternate way I may get to the thought process. If I had a son that was a severe drug addict and he was going through withdrawal, I might consider 2 or more alternatives on what to do. I might choose a slow weaning off process. I might choose cold turkey. ***The Austrian idea is to avoid becoming a drug addict. Once you are drug addict they advocate not using drugs to ease the pain "if it will provide only temporary relief" because you will be faced with the same choice again shortly and solve nothing. That does not mean that they think all credit is bad, every boom leads to a bust, the longer the expansion the worse the outcome, or all increases to the money supply are bad. That's the PAS (Porc's Austrian School). They are examining the weaknesses in fiat money and factional reserve banking and trying to understand their effects on the economy and how they lead to the downside and heightened risk of a major bust. Alan Greenspan did this in a recent speech and more thoroughly before he was an establishment wonk. Of course he must now work within the system he trashed years ago. Again, it not necessary to understand or agree with any of this to be a successful value investor. I don't use it and as far as I know Buffett doesn't even know it exists. However, it may be applicable as a way of understanding the process that leads to the excesses that can also be recognized by a bottom up company and industry approach. This is private because I am trying to avoid the 35th discussion of the same thing that either I can't explain or you refuse to listen to. 34 was enough. I hope this helps. Please leave it at this even if you don't understand it or it rubs you the wrong way still. I am not debating it or trying to convert you. I am trying to help you understand it. So far you do not. WC Wayne: For the 36th time, I refuse to allow you to exhaust me by scoring "unanswerable" points in private, that no one could reasonably expect to go unanswered. It takes me a minimum of hours, but more typically days and even weeks, to think through what I want to write. This puts me at an insurmountable disadvantage versus an intellectual adversary that pours out a few hundred words in 15 minutes, and 1500 words in a couple of hours -- unless I can "amortize" the time I spend by "publishing" my responses to more than just one reader. I have explained this over and over privately. If you are truly trying to "help" me, you will accede to my wish that you "rattle the porcupine's cage" in public, not in private. Thanks. porc --'''':>

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (1554)	4/13/1999 6:03:00 PM
From: porcupine --''''>	Respond to of 1722

To: porcupine --''''> From: Wayne Crimi Tuesday, Apr 13 1999 4:53PM ET I won't be posting to the thread any more. Posting a private message was not at all appropriate even if YOU think it should be public. I don't want to discuss these things in public because they then require answers to things you say that suggest that you do not understand what I am saying and/or the potential applications they have to investors. I can't spend time addressing and readdressing the same misunderstandings because you want a public dialogue and an opportunity to make those points public you feel strongly about. I was trying to both help others (yourself included), offer my insight to them and perhaps gain a better understanding of these issues myself. For you it is about something else. Something that makes our correspondence impossible. You should have a least respected my private message whether you agree or not. Please remove my name from the top of GADR. I am sorry we can't work together for our mutual education and benefit. Please keep this off GADR and respect your FYEO policy. Good luck investing, Wayne To begin with, publishing someone else's e-mail communication is a breach of "Netiquette". Whereas, repeatedly sending someone private communications though that person has repeatedly requested that you not is "net abuse", harrassment, etc., and actionable as such. Because of the special place you occupy in porx heart, you are getting kid gloves treatment. You have chosen to repeatedly ignore my repeated cautions that this would eventually result. You kept rattling my cage in private, no matter how many times I advised you that I would eventually lose my patience and take this public. A reasonable person would immediately realize that they have no one to blame for the consequences but themselves. Yet you see yourself as the innocent victim, rather than as the perpetrator of repeated harrassment and net abuse. But, you are not being dishonest; instead you are quite sincere, because you are incapable of hearing anything you refuse to hear. Your stubborn blindness about the whole episode is, in my invariable experience, a very telling comment on the fundamental irrationality of the AS, and the people it attracts. It's all so rational in its own closed world. But, it isn't the real world, because the real world is far more rich and complex than cult adherents are willing or capable of understanding. So, they block out any facts or logic that would require them to face the fearsome truth that the future is far more unknown than any of these theories would suggest, which is what drives them to the reassuring pseudo-certainties of kook theories in the first place. I have told you over and over: If it's not for public consumption, or something of a highly personal nature, stop sending it to me in private. I am not interested in "private tutoring" about the AS, as you should surely know by now. Your assertion that "I don't want to discuss these things in public because they then require answers to things you say that suggest that you do not understand what I am saying and/or the potential applications they have to investors" is interesting, and perhaps to the point. If you feel compelled to "suggest" that I "do not understand" something, I want those suggestions out in the open, for others to draw their own conclusions. For the record, I am interested in open dialectic, an intellectual tradition as old as Socrates, and one without which no intellectual advances are at all possible. Absent a "peer review" process such as this board informally provides, dialectic becomes an "echo chamber" in which it may be claimed that it is the listener who is not listening. Try and pull yourself together. The topic is whether or not the economy going forward is less cyclical than in the past, and if so, will average cash earnings in the future be higher than in the past (a very important distinction you made in a recent posting).