Five months ago the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed above ten thousand mark – a mark it first achieved in 1999 – for the first time in a year. Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed below the ten thousand mark for the first time in three months.
∙ Party Like It’s 1999: Dow Crosses 10,000 For The First Time In A Year [SocketSite]
∙ Perhaps At Some Point The “Unexpected” Shouldn’t Be Quite So [SocketSite]
Any line out of the song will work, take a look at some of the lyrics:
I was dreamin’ when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray
But when I woke up this mornin’
Coulda sworn it was judgment day
The sky was all purple,
there were people runnin’ everywhere
Tryin’ to run from the destruction,
U know I didn’t even care
I was dreamin’ when I wrote this
So sue me if I go to fast
But life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last
War is all around us, my mind says prepare to fight
So if I gotta die I’m gonna listen to my body tonight
So many options here!!
meanwhile (and possibly closer to home), ‘tech spending bounces back as profits rise’ (WSJ today on how Cisco is seeing better numbers and expects to hire more in 2010).
Yes, Cisco of San Jose will be hiring lots of H1B visa holders as usual. That should really give SF real estate a big boost
You could move every single Cisco employee except John Chambers to to Bangalore and no one would be able to tell the difference. Cisco’s not Google, by a long, long shot.
Perhaps Jonathan Schwartz will take his golden parachute and buy a high-end residence in The City.
“Two thousand One zero, party over, I’m out of Time.”
“So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s&hellip”
This stock market rally is based on weak recovery numbers. Expect slow growth at best for the next decade or two.
Cisco have tricks in their bag and a record of development that is similar to the old HP. Especially with the money they are making from video streaming specialty products it would be a mistake to write them off. There are no other Googles out there, and that is a good thing. The closest there was to that was VMWare, and we’ve all seen what happened to that. It takes more than a lot of great employees to deliver globe changing products.
In my opinion very very few people thought that 2009’s performance had anything to do with fundamentals. It had to do with cheap cash. The cash has to go somewhere, so it went to equities and commodities.
I’ve said this many times before, but there are many major structural problems with our global economy, and few to none of them are improved. Many are worse! The problems have simply been papered over by a transfer of debt obligations from the private sector to the public sector combined with extraordinarily loose monetary and fiscal policy combined with many backdoor bailouts and stealth infusions of capital into various institutions etc.
This covers the problem, but the underlying issues remain. Many people understand that this can not go on forever (although it can last a VERY long time). Today the markets are presumably spooked because reality intruded reminding us that you really can’t borrow your way to prosperity, and there really is limited amounts of money the governments can borrow.
But this doesn’t mean the equities markets will collapse again in a repeat of 2008. Instead we may see wild gyrations up and down for no particular reason. Of course the cacaphony of “experts” will try to give a reason for each up and downswing, when the reality is that our economy is unstable. Unstable things oscillate.
If history is a guide (debatable to some) we have years to go of economic hardship.
It is unlikely, but possible, that a leukemia patient will be cured in a week. It is equally unlikely that we can have a major credit crisis that would resolve in one year.
The nice thing: there are more important things than money!
ex SF-er,
If you come here http://www.labodeguita.com/ you will find the answers you seek.
Try the Haitian rum.
Paul
paul, nice call. one of my favorite peninsula restaurants. if you are still drinking after dinner, I like the ron zacapa (guatamala)
It is so odd that you put that link there. I am typically a Macallan Scotch drinker, but 2 weeks ago I had some Appleton Estates Rum for the first time. Surprisingly to me, I liked it.
I was drinking it when I wrote the above post.
I’ll definitely try la bodequita out.
Since we’re talking latin/cuban, I’d like to remind you all that Haiti is an absolute mess even though it left the headlines. I have two friends volunteering down there right now. To say things are a catastrophe is an understatement. Especially for the kids (almost no pediatricians. my friend seems to be the only one the can find). Please think of them and do what you can.
Tipster and Brahma.
What is your upside in bashing a local company when it comes out that it is hiring and has strong earnings? Constant negativity from you tipster especially…If you really think one of the larger local companies hiring and doing well has zero effect on the local economy, think again.
The economy is always unstable. Economic history is one of booms and busts. We had a brief relatively stable period in the United States from 1982 to 2008, but outside of that period we have had wild swings almost every decade. This is nothing unusual.
The 19th Century was even worse and if you want to see some really crazy economic cycles, look at someplace like Brazil, or almost any country in Europe before WWII. Right now I am reading a _The Ascent_Of_Money_ and it is really amazing how frequent currency crises and bank runs were back in the bad old days of the gold standard.
The current deficits are just crutches until the patient can walk an his own again, deregulating the financial system really damaged the economy badly. It takes more than one year to clean up from the mess that this left behind. It is true that unless we institute real financial reform, we are likely to see another boom and bust cycle relatively soon.
Locally, the tech economy is doing very well, almost all the biggies reported blowout earnings. There will be another huge tech company like Google again, it is probably in the early start-up stage right now. Do you really believe everything worth inventing has already been discovered already? It is a very bizarre kind of hubris to think that there is nothing left to build and no great companies to be formed.
How about “Sign O’ The Times”?