*** Greenspan: Demi-god...or devil? Did he keep rates too
high for too long?
*** Best and worst industries...why not 'sell everything'?
...belly dancers at Le Pied au Chameau...and oh, la-la, so
much more...
*** Even a Freudian psychologist, dropped from a high
enough point, will bounce a little. On Monday, the Dow fell
436 points. Then, it bounced a little on Tuesday, dropped
another 317 points on Wednesday, and bounced again
yesterday.
*** The Dow rose 57 points to close slightly above the
10,000 mark.
*** It was a relief to bullish investors to see the Dow
above 10,000...but how long will it last?
*** Investors must be getting a lot of margin calls. The
Financial Times reports that margin debt declined 29% last
year - as investors paid up or got knocked out of their
positions. This was a sharpest decline in the history of
the NYSE.
*** Still, at the end of January, margin debt stood at $197
billion - more than twice the level at the beginning of
1997, the year that margin debt first rose above $100
billion.
*** Fred Hickey, who publishes a popular technology stock
letter, says he expects the Dow to fall to 5,000 and the
Nasdaq to drop below 1,000.
*** The Nasdaq lost 31 points yesterday, remaining below
2,000. But who cares about the Nasdaq anymore? The action
has moved to the Dow.
*** And investors are getting restless. The Wilshire 5000
has lost 27% of its value since March 24th of last year.
That represents a loss of wealth of $4.6 trillion, an
amount equal to half the total annual output of the U.S.
economy...or about $50,000 per family.
*** "Everyone is out of work and everyone feels like
they've been the victims of a big Ponzi scheme," said a
voice at the Silicon Summit II, hosted by Tom Brokaw.
*** People are not quick to take responsibility for their
own foolishness. Instead they look for someone else to
blame. CNBC says it is already getting emails calling for
Greenspan's resignation. He kept rates too high for too
long, they say. "Greenspan is the devil incarnate from the
point of view of ordinary Americans," said Bill Meehan of
Cantor Fitzgerald. "Some people have seen 80% of their
pension funds wiped out."
*** From demi-god to devil in less than 60 days? Not quite.
Most people still think that Greenspan has the power to
reverse the bear market by lowering the fed funds rate.
Reuters reports that the "Clamor grows for bigger rate
cut."
*** "People ask me why I don't say 'sell everything,'"
writes James Cramer on TheStreet.com. But Cramer cannot
understand how lower rates, in an economy that is still
adding jobs and is not bothered by inflation, can fail to
lift stock prices. "I want to buy here," he concludes.
*** Out of 8,000 stock recommendations tracked by Zacks.com
- only 29 were sell signals. "Investors who aren't bullish
are not very well served," concluded Addison. He's putting
the finishing touches on a new investment advisory service
for people who want to make money in the markets, but don't
believe the Dow or Nasdaq are going up any time soon
...watch this space...
*** Gold fell another $2.60 - as the Bank of England
auctioned off tons of the stuff. Gold mining companies fell
an average of 3%.
*** The euro fell below 90 cents in yesterday's trading.
*** The trade deficit hit a new record last year - $435
billion, up 31% from the $341 billion in 1999.
*** According to the Leuthold Group, the median dividend
yield for the S&P 500 since 1957 has been 3.4%, the source
of about a third of the total return from stocks for the
last half a century. But now, the S&P 500 yields only 1.1%.
*** Rob Peebles: "The '80s and '90s were the best back to
back decades for stocks in 200 years. If stock market
returns revert to their long-term average, stocks could go
nowhere for some time. The bottom line? The dividend yield
may be telling investors who think the market is near a
bottom to wait. And then wait some more."
*** A friend sends me this from "Bigchart.com"...the best
and worst performing industries over the last 3 months:
Best Performing Industries
Industry Name Percent Change (over time selected)
Tires 42.26%
Toys 33.87%
Auto Parts 31.26%
Oil Drilling 24.70%
Autos And Parts 22.49%
Household Products, Durable 21.43%
Tobacco 21.28%
Furnishings 20.80%
Automobiles 18.15%
Factory Equipment 18.11%
*** Japanese banks are thought to have 'imbedded losses'
equal to 5% to 10% of the nation's GDP. "It has reached the
point where things are going to go bust," said an analyst
interviewed by the Financial Times.
*** "Watch Japan. Japan is a particular tinderbox at the
moment," said Bill Gross of PIMCO, the biggest bond fund in
the world. "The world's second largest economy is teetering
on the brink of recession," he added. That means the
world's two largest economies are both in trouble. Is the
whole world in trouble? Maybe...more below...
*** "You mean, the Russians were shooting their own
soldiers?" Addison asked me. "Why would they do that?"
*** As the film, 'Stalingrad,' illustrates, things happen
which - even in this Age of Unlimited Information - are
hard to believe or understand. Stalin sent the young Nikita
Kruschev - a man who had proven effective at starving and
murdering millions of Ukrainian farmers - to Stalingrad to
try to rescue the situation. Kruschev handed a loaded
pistol to the military commander and told him to blow his
own brains out - which he obligingly did. Then, Marshal
Zhukov came to take the command. In one instance, Zhukov
lined up a group of Russian soldiers and shot every 10th
man. He warned them that if they tried to retreat, he would
kill them all.
*** At the beginning of the campaign, the Germans captured
hundreds of thousands of Russian troops. Few survived
prisoner of war camps, but if by the grace of God, a man
lived to return to Russia after the war - the Soviets
charged him with treason for allowing himself to be
captured and sent him to Siberia!
*** On a lighter note, last night Addison showed a few
friends from the Baltimore office the way to Le Pied au
Chameau (The Camel's Foot) a Moroccan restaurant around the
corner from the office. He tells me they dined on among
other items from the menu - an actual camel's foot (I'm
sorry I missed it). Afterwards, they danced with a belly
dancer... her picture is here.
(I'm really sorry I missed that!)
Several top geologists quit big firms, and start out on
their own. The new stock pays 100%-2,000% a year. But As
usual...
Early investors make all the money before Wall Street even
gets wind of the deal. The pattern is repeated. Again and
again. With the right tip you could have bet a whole lot
less than the ranch - and still made a killing. For
reliable hands-on intelligence - and your shot 1,000% gains
in stocks ignored by Wall Street:
Immediately following the end of WWII Americans turned
their attentions to making and consuming 'things'. From
1945 onward, year in and year out, Americans had more
and more things available to them.
Household wealth increased each year. Neither wars,
pestilence, inflation, the incompetence and imbecility of
government, natural calamity, nor even bulls and bears on
Wall Street could stop it. Wealth building survived the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War...recession,
inflation, stagflation...John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson,
Richard Nixon...treasury bond rates of 18%...television...the
Energy Crisis, Flower Power, Watts... Michael Dukakis, Barbra
Streisand, Lee Greenwood...disco, a vast right wing conspiracy,
recovered memory syndrome...Jimmy Carter, Andy Warhol - even
the Laurence Welk show.
Through all these horrors Americans added to the 'things'
they had and the 'things' they were able to make. A bull
market in wealth building was underway - one that would
last for more than half a century.
By the mid-1990s, Americans had become the masters of all
the worlds' 'things' - buying up 20% of the entire world's
exports, with a dollar that seemed to become more valuable
with every additional unit in circulation, and an economy
that seemed to have entered a New Era - where the number of
'things' an ordinary American family might possess seemed
almost unlimited. That is, as long as the rest of the world
was willing to provide these 'things' in exchange for
dollars...and finance a trade deficit which, last year,
equaled more than the entire U.S. federal budget during the
last year of the Carter administration.
By the late '90s most people have convinced themselves that
there was something different about this economy from all
those who came before. For the first time in the history of
mankind, 'things' seemed less important, economically.
Instead, it was the 'information' behind things that
mattered.
All of a sudden, it seemed like a new world. Anyone could
make things - anywhere. The real money was in 'information'
itself.
Information, it was argued, would eliminate waste, reduce
costs, and put an end to the business cycle. Previously -
the Age of Ignorance, you might call it - businessmen
tended to over-expand and over-produce in good times. This
led to over-capacity and inventories that needed to be
drawn down before a new growth phase could begin.
"Information" would make recessions - and bear markets, for
that matter - a thing of the past. There would be no
further need for inventories since 'information' would
allow manufacturers and distributors to match supply
perfectly to demand.
Savings are a form of inventory - a reserve of purchasing
power for capital improvements or unexpected setbacks. But
the new Information Economy needed little of either.
Henceforth, there would be no unpleasant surprises...and
productivity increases and cost reductions would finance
the fastest economic growth the world has ever seen.
What a wonderful world we had stumbled upon, dear reader -
an economic Shangri-La...where even time itself could be
mastered, like a hunting dog. Just whistle and you could
get tomorrow's profits fetched for you today. It was no
longer thought necessary to wait for compound interest to
build wealth. You could have it all - now.
And you could feel good about yourself - even feel superior
- as you were mortgaging the family home to buy stock in
companies that made neither 'things' nor profits.
Information Age companies were said to have a new form of
capital, one that didn't show up on the balance sheet:
intellectual capital.
Who knew what this new capital was worth? Any price might
be too low.
"Owning brick manufacturers, shoe makers, car insurance
firms and candy retailers - like Warren Buffett does -
isn't going to make the world a better place," as info-
believer Porter Stansberry put it recently. "Buffett
doesn't create wealth like Venter."
Craig Venter is the CEO of Celera, a company that spent hundreds
of millions to increase the world's supply of information.
Buffett's companies, by contrast, make old fashioned
'things'. Buffett's businesses make profits. Venter's does
not.
In the 1990s, the grand illusion of the Information Age
took hold of American imaginations. Let the foreigners make
'things,' they said to themselves, we will consume them.
Information Age companies reached ebullient levels on Wall
Street, while the makers of 'things' became nearly as
demode as gold bugs.
But something remarkable happened last year. For the first
time in 55 years - household wealth declined. The story has
gotten relatively little press attention. Like the
Russian's treatment of its own troops, the report is
scarcely believable...how could American households lose
wealth in the very same year that the "Information Economy"
reached its fulgurous climax?
Could it be that 'things' are still what really matters -
at least for purposes of calculating wealth? And could it
be that an economy that turns from producing things to
consuming them is one that has taken the road to ruin?
"Even in these days of the vaunted New Economy," writes
author Eamonn Fingleton, "[manufacturing capacity] is an
absolutely critical factor in world economic competition.
And the results are apparent in Japan's extraordinary trade
performance in recent years. In fact Japan's current
account surpluses for the decade of the 1990s totaled 2.1
times their level in the 1980s...
"And how has the United States been doing on trade? The
contrast with Japan could hardly be more startling. As the
American manufacturing base has shrunk, America's trade
deficits have soared. For 2000, the current account surplus
is likely to be a record 4.4 per cent of national output.
By contrast, the worst deficit in the 1980s was just 3.6
per cent national output - a record that was widely
considered disastrous at the time...
"In fact, so strong are Japanese savings that Japan is now
exporting more capital in real terms than any nation since
America's days of global economic dominance in the 1950s.
While the Japanese economic bureaucrats are loathe to draw
attention to this fact for fear of fanning protectionist
sentiment in Washington, the results are starkly apparent
in little-noticed IMF financial statistics for national
external balances. These show that in the first nine years
of the 1990s, Japan's net external assets jumped from $294
billion to $1,153 billion. Meanwhile, America's net
external liabilities rocketed from $49 billion to $1,537
billion."
So, I put the question to you, gentle reader, who got rich
in the 1990s? The people who made 'things' while their
stock market collapsed? Or the people who produced
'information,' while prices of their stocks soared?
And now that the 55-year-long bull trend in wealth building
in America has been broken - what comes next?
The Shocking Final Stage of the Internet Revolution
Strap on your seat belt. It's going to be a bumpy ride. The
financial markets have entered an entirely new phase. In
fact...
The New Era ended on May 4th, 2000.
That's the day the Bureau of Labor Statistics officially
reported that U.S. productivity growth was much lower than
expected. The whole premise of an economy that could borrow
and spend its way to "inflation free" growth forever was
finally revealed for what it is - a complete and total
sham. Now, the smart money has moved on...click here to
learn:
Bill Bonner is,
in spite of himself, a natural born contrarian. Early each morning, Bill
writes The Daily
Reckoning—his take on the financial markets and what’s going
on in the world—and sends it off by e-mail before most Americans’
alarm clocks have buzzed. Many readers say it's the first thing they want
to read when they get up—not only because it's informative and thought
provoking, but also it's inspiring, in its own quirky and provocative way.
Of course, there's
much more to Bill than his daily market commentary. He's also the founder
and president of Agora Publishing, one of the world's most successful
consumer newsletter publishing companies. Bill's passion for international
travel and big ideas are reflected in the company he's successfully built.
In 1979, he began publishing International Living and Hulbert's
Financial Digest . Since then, the company has grown to include
dozens of newsletters focusing on health, travel, and finance. Bill has
vigorously expanded from Agora's home base in Baltimore, Maryland since
the early ’90s—opening offices in Florida, London, Paris, Ireland, and
Germany.
Agora's publication
subsidiaries include Pickering
& Chatto, a prestigious academic press in London and Les
Belles Lettres in Paris, best known as a publisher of classical
literature in bilingual editions.
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Last modified: April 01, 2001
Published By Tulips and Bears
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