bushwhacked

There they go again! When they can't prevail on an issue, they personalize. Tell me is there anything you can't blame Clinton for? <BR><BR>Bush said he would run America like a CEO. Little did we know he meant like an Enron and WorldCom CEO. Corporate immorality and robbing hundreds of thousands of shareholders is just O.K. in your book?<BR><BR>So...how exactly is our current trade deficit Clinton's fault? There are some major gaps in your [ill]ogic.

peace and prosperity

Tell me how you have benefitted from the Bush economic policies. Oh I get it. I have to wait eight years to find out. <BR><BR>You Repubs are so preocupied with sexuality and who got into who's pants. But it's so hypocritical. It's not as if your Newt and Bill Barr didn't have any experience at it either. Read David Brock's Blinded By the Right to get an insight into the pious and hypocritical GOP morality evidenced above.

thou shall not steal

Republicans RULE? Is that a freudian slip? I know you'd like to have it that way, but the last time I looked, this country was a Democracy.<BR><BR>It's more like Republicans STEAL.

accounting scandals

Economists are beginning to suggest that the widening corporate accounting scandal is starting to erode consumer confidence as well as investor confidence — in part because so many Americans now own stocks, mostly in retirement plans<BR><BR>"This is certainly shaking the confidence of investors, businesses and I would think soon consumers and households," said Mark<BR>Zandi, chief economist with Economy.com. "It's going to be hard on the economy. It's just one more hurdle for this very tentative recovery to overcome."<BR><BR>The WorldCom revelations were the latest blow to stock markets that have been performing dismally for months.<BR><BR>Investors sent stocks plunging on Wednesday, with the Dow Jones industrials falling below 9,000 for the first time since October and the Nasdaq for a while trading at its lowest levels in more than three years before both indexes recovered most of those losses<BR>by the close of trading. For the first time since the 1920s, stock markets have been falling during the first few months of an economic recovery.<BR><BR>Gene Sperling, former President Clinton's chief economic adviser, remains optimistic that the fragile recovery will continue, if slowly, and that the economy won't slip back into recession.<BR><BR>But he said recent events have been disturbing. "I think the demand people were hoping for to juice up the economy has been weakened by uncertainty on a number of fronts — from accounting scandals to Mideast uncertainty to deterioration of our fiscal situation."

Mississippi Clarion News

Nancy Lottridge Anderson invested in WorldCom not only because she was impressed by technology the company acquired with the purchase of UUNET, but also for a reason closer to home.<BR><BR>"I liked the fact it was a Mississippi company," said Anderson, a chartered financial analyst in Clinton. "A lot of people like having a Mississippi company in their portfolio."<BR><BR>A day after hearing WorldCom massively inflated its earnings for more than a year, Anderson said she feels like she's been duped and left with a big black eye.<BR><BR>"It's so disappointing when you have a situation where they're supposed to be disseminating information and you're basing many decisions on it, and the information is erroneous," she said. "<BR><BR>"I've said many times as I've watched the Enron scandal and others unfold that these guys have done more damage to the market than the terrorists in September."<BR><BR>Jean Sain of Jackson, a Realtor who owns stock in WorldCom, said she's devastated and embarrassed by WorldCom's latest financial news.<BR><BR>She purchased the stock when the company was known as LDDS and recommended to her by Bernie Ebbers' Brookhaven barber, whom she'd met on a trip to Africa. <BR><BR>"I'm disgusted," she said. "It's the principle of the thing. To think it's happened like this."<BR><BR>Bill Rogers of Ridgeland, a sales consultant at Gray-Daniels in Brandon, said he drew money from his 401(k) plan and bought 1,000 shares of WorldCom stock four months ago because he thought it would be a good investment. <BR><BR>"It really gets me, what with Bernie Ebbers being a Mississippi resident and WorldCom being a Mississippi business," he said. <BR><BR>Ken Griffin, a WorldCom stockholder since 1994, said he's disappointed personally and for Mississippi.

peace and prosperity

What happened, all you right-wing nuts above. Suddenly run out of arguments? <BR><BR>For the sake of America, let's get the crooks and sleazy oil and defense corporate THIEFS OUT. As it is, they have all their money in off-shore acccounts anyway, leaving you and me the taxpayers to pay their war on "terrar".

laws don't apply

If those well-connected oil insiders were actually paying taxes like the rest of us, I might be a little more forgiving. But they all have their money in off-shore accounts.<BR><BR>I.e, did any of you follow the disingenious debate on the U.S. House floor last week? It's as if the Republicans felt that off-shores were somehow divinely deserved. But for them, only.

Hans H

While I have a lot of sympathy for everyone having to pay more for their hollidays, the talk about gloom and doom of the dollar is highly exaggerated.<BR><BR>If you look at the range of the dollar to the Euro and to one of its predecessors (the German Mark being worth 0.50 Euro) you find:<BR><BR>In the mid-80's, a dollar bought 1.50 Euro. In the mid-90's, it bought about 0.70 or 0.75 Euro. Now the dollar buys 1 Euro, neither especially strong nor especially weak if you look at a time-range of 20 years. If you look at the 90's, it's still quite strong.<BR><BR>Does there exist a correlation between strength of a currency and success of a currency? Up to a point but during the 90's, the dollar hit an all-time low against the German mark while the US economy was booming, the US inflation and unemployment was low and the stock vaue went through the roof. If a currency is weaker, it has disadvantages but also advantages, for example for the export industry. Many US economists weren't happy about the strength of the US dollar and wished for the weakening happening now.<BR><BR>Does this help anyone having to pay 10% more for the hollidays than half a year ago? No and my sympathy but this isn't the beginning of the end of the US dollar, economy or stock market.