Just bringing you the facts, so don't blame me. There are plenty of doors around to kick.

-- FACT FINDER (fact@finder.for.you), May 10, 2000

Answers

As I've said before, Japan isn't the leading edge these days, New York is. Down 7% today could be up 5% tomorrow, depending on what NY does tomorrow. No one is taking their lead from Tokyo right now.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), May 10, 2000.

*****Yawn****** Could it be that they are following our market, not vice versa???? You act like we've never had a downturn in the market before... this is striclty a market event, not an economic event...

-- Rob (celtic64@inficad.com), May 10, 2000.

Not true Brian. If the Yen tanks, its all over for the dollar and the rest of the world's fragile currencies...and for the rest of our "broad family of financial instruments" as well.

-- (@ .), May 10, 2000.

Wait a minute, I just checked and the NIKKIE is down less than 4%! Of course, might change in 10 minutes, so let's look at the close, okay? check here: http://cnnfn.com/markets/world_markets.html

-- Rob (celtic64@inficad.com), May 10, 2000.

>> If the Yen tanks, its all over for the dollar... <<

Nope. I disagree. If US Treasuries tank, it's all over for the dollar. A dropping Yen without dropping T-Bonds, T-Bills or T-Notes means clear sailing for the dollar. Probably means renewed strength for the dollar.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), May 10, 2000.

GL:

I'm assuming you mean the Nikkei 225 although you'd have a little more credibility if you at least learned how it's spelled.

At any rate, it's down 3.23% at of 2145 PDT. Pretty similar to our market, which the Japanese tend follow nowadays. As Brian pointed out, the days of the Nikkei 225 being some kind of world market leader are long past.

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), May 11, 2000.

Is that the "Darling Nikkie" about which The Artist Formerly And So Forth wrote a hit song? No, wait, that's "Nikki". I'm so confused...

Be that as it may, Japan has been trying to drag itself out of a recession for the past 10 years, so their market dropping a few percentage points is not - uhhh, how you say? - headline news.

On the other hand: watch the euro, friends. If those zany EU central bankers keep up their current comedy act, that currency will lose value in a great and disruptive hurry. How they can screw this up when they're under no severe economic pressures is beyond me, but they may yet manage to do so.

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), May 11, 2000.