> Dennis wrote:
> >Wall Street's profits have fuelled a mighty foreign direct
> >investment boom throughout the world, as well as equity bubbles in Mexico,
> >Latin America, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, etc.
>
> A "mighty foreign direct investment boom _throughout_ the world"???
Yep. Stocks are only part of the Wall Street class racket; the other important part is selling Government and corporate bonds to yield-hungry investors and institutions who -- surprise, surprise -- just happen to be the same folks buying up stocks. US firms sell these bonds and then have used the proceeds to finance real investment -- such is the money trail. Foreign direct investment or FDI has shot way up during the 1990s -- not as fast, to be sure, as investment in equities or other financial instruments, but still pretty impressively nonetheless. The Singaporean economy, for example, is underwritten by US overseas investment; Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Seagate, etc. have all been opening up fabrication plants all across Asia. To be sure, the Japanese firms have been beating the Americans at their own game, and the corporate networks of Matsushita, Sony and Mitsubishi, to take only a few examples, are in no way inferior to US firms. Interestingly, many European firms have also invested heavily in SE Asia, and are now beginning to do the same thing in Eastern Europe.
-- Dennis