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To: Ahda who wrote (34276)	5/20/1999 4:38:00 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116764

<<Alex sorry to trouble you but i have not been able to obtain figures on how much of this economy is directly tied to brokerage market and the resulting jobs that off shoot from it. If you or anyone else happen to run into any figures available I would appreciate if they could be shared.>> how about a count of all brokerage jobs, add to it all reporting on the market, + all the jobs @ Porsche, Jag, & MB dealers,and all those that deliver pizzas to the above. Must be some way we can justify the count of Dr.s of proctology in here also.

To: Ahda who wrote (34276)	5/20/1999 7:02:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116764

Maybe Drying Up the Economic Oasis Isn't Such a Good Idea: Caroline Baum By Caroline Baum Maybe Drying Up the Oasis Isn't Such a Good Idea: Caroline Baum London, May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Is this really the time to start drying up the oasis of prosperity? Taking the Federal Reserve's words at face value, it seems the central bank is willing to raise benchmark interest rates and shift the U.S. economy into lower gear. It does so at the risk of putting the rest of the global economy into reverse. Because the rest of the world is sputtering. Today Germany reported business confidence fell in April, continuing an 18- month slide. In the U.K., retail sales declined in April, and in Italy industrial orders posted their biggest year-over-year drop in 2 1/2 years in February. That's not to say that the global economy lacks its rising stars. South Korea has been pumping out strong economic numbers one after the next. Korean gross domestic product rose 4.6 percent in the first quarter compared with a year ago, the first increase since the fourth quarter of 1997. The unemployment rate fell 0.8 percent point to 7.2 percent in April. And industrial production soared 18.4 percent in March from a year earlier, the biggest increase in four years. While Asia's Tiger economies have probably seen the worst, what looks like a ''V-shaped'' bottom in Korea may be a result of a restocking effort after a huge inventory draw down following the collapse of the Asian economies. European economies, meanwhile, are struggling despite a good dose of interest rate medicine delivered by slow drip over the last few years. Germany's Ifo economic research institute's monthly survey showed that West German business confidence declined again in April. The index has registered only two monthly increases since September 1997. Glum for Good Reason What's there to be cheerful about? Exporters are still smarting from the Asian collapse. At home, even after the resignation of the anti-business Finance Minister Oskar LaFontaine, business still lacks a true ally. Earlier in the week, the new finance minister, Hans Eichel, said that reductions in corporate taxes would be delayed at least until January 2001 because of the complexity of the issue. Complexity? Cutting the main corporate tax rate from 40 percent to 25 percent is not complex, unless the government chooses to make it so. Instead, having committed to a major reduction of the budget deficit, the government will wait and introduce a ''comprehensive regime'' of tax cuts with the 2001 budget. In the meantime, Herr Eichel would not exclude the possibility of an increase in the value-added tax. He hopes to cut 30 billion deutsche marks ($16.35 billion) from federal spending next year to achieve that end but clearly wants to keep his options open. Role Model Maybe Eichel should talk to his counterparts in Japan before he considers raising the VAT. It was the increase in Japan's VAT from 3 percent to 5 percent in April 1997 that delivered the fatal blow to Japan's economy, which has posted only one quarter of positive GDP growth since the increase in the VAT. Two years later, the Bank of Japan's assessment of the economy was pretty pathetic. In its monthly economic report, the central bank said: ''Japan's economy, at present, has stopped deteriorating, but clear signs of recovery have not been observed yet.'' It sure sounds as if there is one and only one engine of global economic growth. Do the words ''oasis of prosperity'' ring a bell? And the Fed wants to slow it down? Talk about irrational exuberance. ©1999 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Trademarks.