Whew! I Unloaded My Tech Stocks at 1:15 PM!
Wednesday, April 5, 2000
One of the good things about working out of one's den is the ability to watch television. One of the good things about watching television is you can keep track of news, sports, weather and, of course, old movies on American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies.
You can also watch the NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation) index drop through the floor on CNBC. Through the floor? It was well on its way to China yesterday.
At about 1:15 yesterday afternoon the technology-heavy index had fallen about 574 points - or about 13 percent. If the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 13 percent you would have been looking at a point drop in the range of 1,450 points. Interestingly, on October 29, 1929 (the infamous "Black Tuesday") the stock market dropped approximately � 13 percent.
By the end of the day the NASDAQ had recovered all but about 1.8 percent of its previous day's close.
America Held Hostage - Day 45. Al Gore has not held a press conference since February 19, 2000. No group questions about the fund raising scandals nor Charles LaBella. No back-and-forth about the Gonzales kid. No discussions about friends making money from the Tennessee Valley Authority. Nothing. Just Imperfect Al sailing along. Untested.
With all the hoo-hah about the 2000 census, the Associated Press ran an interesting piece about the first census in 1790. President George Washington desperately wanted the census to find that there were more than four million people living in the United States because, one assumes, he felt that a country of less than four million would not be taken seriously. The count came up with 3,929,214 - 70,786 short.
If Bill Clinton had been President in 1790, the Census Bureau simply would have adjusted the statistical sampling apparatus to produce those additional people. That's really the danger in statistical sampling: That the Administration - any Administration - might decide what it wants the answer to be (how many of a certain economic stratum, of a certain ethnicity, in a given geographic region exist) and then instruct the statisticians to come up with a formula which delivers that answer.
Secretary of State Madeline Albright has been sniffing around Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi suggesting she might move toward removing some or all of the travel restrictions between the U.S. and Libya which have been in place for 13 years. We now know she was doing that because Libya is a member of OPEC and we wanted them to agree to an increase in oil production.
Reuters ran this description of our new friends: "Libya is one of the fiercest critics of the Israeli-Arab peace process and has long sheltered radical anti-Israeli guerrillas, including Abu Nidal."
If you go to the Department of State's page titled, "Tips for Travelers to the Middle East and North Africa" (where Libya happens to be located) you get this: "Tips for Travelers to the Middle East and North Africa is currently in revision. We will make it available as soon as it is completed." Your tax dollars at work.
If you want to go to India and Pakistan here is a Mullings Tip for Travelers: Become President of the United States. Go. Spend 50 million dollars. Come back.
More Internet Ironies: Common Cause held a press conference yesterday to announce some bogus lawsuit it has filed with the Federal Election Commission against both the Hillary Clinton and the Rudy Giuliani campaigns for U.S. Senate claiming they are laundering soft money into their campaign operations.
Here's the irony: A fairly close examination of the Common Cause web page fails to turn up a list of donors to � Common Cause. It might be there, but if it is, it ain't easy to find. Reformer, disclose thyself.
-- END --
Home | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?
Copyright �2000 Richard A. Galen | Site design by Campaign Solutions.
|
