Should we be diving for cover?

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Published Monday, September 25, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News

Should we be diving for cover? BY MIKE CASSIDY Mercury News You ever get that feeling somebody's not telling you something?

Oh sure, now that it looks like the entire European economy is collapsing, a few experts are saying it might be time to worry. Intel, the Santa Clara mega-chip company, seems to be worrying, though it's so worried it doesn't really want to talk about it.

The company gave investors a little heads up that chips aren't selling so well in Europe. Investors gave the company a little heads up by selling off the stock and hammering the markets before letting them up for air. (The Dow down more than 140! Wait. Wait. It's up. Up about 82 at the close!)

But still other experts say relax. Didn't we tell you it would close up? Just a little blip. That's all.

This is the New Economy, they say. Forget about recession, unemployment, depression, inflation. Dude, that's so Old Economy.

But if everything is so good, why do I feel so bad?

Good luck trying to figure it out by reading the paper in recent weeks. (You should read the paper, though. It's good for you.)

The paper says the numbers are solid. Silicon Valley is booming. Revenues for the 150 top Silicon Valley companies were up 33 percent for the first half of 2000. And profits? They were up 83 percent.

Mercury News columnist Peter Delevett reports that so many companies are starting up so fast that there aren't enough people to fill their boards. Yahoo increases revenues by 43,000 percent in five years. That's 43,000, as in, well, 43,000.

But, you know all that, right? You read it every day.

Me, too. But the paper says other stuff. I read it and worry. The euro is sliding. Foreign stock markets are shaky. Every day another dot-com lays off a quarter or half its workers. Others just flip the sign to ``Closed.''

AltaVista tells 225 workers they really won't be needed anymore. Food.com shaves 50 percent of the cost off the company picnic by showing half its workers the door. Pseudo.com becomes a pseudo-company by dumping its entire staff and calling it a day.

And it's not just dot-coms. There was the Intel news. And before that, software biggie Informix tells the world it will lose money in the third quarter. And, by they way, it's splitting itself in two to spread the misery.

Then there's the bad news about where people spend the money they make (or used to make) at work.

The California Association of Realtors says only 16 percent of Bay Area residents can afford to buy a median-priced home here. That doesn't even count people who were able to buy a home, but can hardly afford to keep it.

And gas prices. Maybe that's the layoff silver lining. Those who don't have jobs don't have to buy the gas to get there. Oil prices recently hit a 10-year high.

Yep, $34.97 a barrel, which is just shy of what it costs to fill my car. It makes me wonder: Can that little mini-van really hold a barrel?

And so I figure maybe gas is behind my economic anxiety, until I read how the Consumer Price Index, which measures how much we pay for stuff, dropped last month for the first time in more than a year. The reason? Low energy costs.

Help.

Maybe we should just pick and choose what news we want to pay attention to. Feeling a little blue? Go with the revenues-and-profits-are-up, companies-can't-find-enough-people-to-run-them scenario. Blip, schmlip. Everything is fine.

In the mood for a good stew? Go with the everybody's-getting-fired, gas-costs-more-than-gold, no-one-in-France-will-ever-buy-a-computer-again scenario. The boom is bust.

No, it won't change whatever it is that's going on. But at least it will make you feel like you have some control over something.

http://www.sjmercury.com/premium/local/docs/cassidy25.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 26, 2000

Answers

About the only thing we can do at this point is, make sure we have a good pair of shoes,lots of sterno to make coffee,blankets to keep warm when your on the streets. There is a certain rotten tribe of asses that are causeing this and it's just to make money. When the American public should ever wake-up, this will never happen again. If anyone that reads this doesn't know who i'm talking about, then i feel sorry for them. It is VERY sad.

-- Carl Suhr (cnbsuhr@localaccess.com), September 26, 2000.

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