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I'd be happy to offer a case of 12 year old Lagavulin, yes. Not sure what
you mean by accounting error, but I'll tell you this: it isn't the $1.21bn
that's mythical, it's the $7 tn post office savings. No, they can't handle
it. Japan is going to go down.
<P>What's intersting about this list is that only ten days since Wall St
started collapsing the 'so-far-so-good' syndrome has already set in. People
are getting punch-drunk, not comprehending the scale of the bad news any
more, or inventing sinister-but-comforting legends that the Masters of
the Universe are actually inventing the crisis, which is at best a quarter-truth,
in the same way that Neville Chamberlain and Daladier invented Hitler.
The news is bad, and is getting worse; if the Brazil stock exchange had
closed because of a freefall in prices six months ago, it would have consumed
front pages for a day anyway; today it doesn't raise an eyebrow. Everybody
knows that worse is still to come. Doesn't it strike you as just a trifle
apcoalyptic, unprcedented anyway, for a paper like the FT to recommend
nationalising the Japanese banking system?
<P>Mark
<BR>
<BR>
<P>Doyle Saylor wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE>Hello everyone,
<BR> Mark why don't you make
this bet worth Max's time, a bottle of
<BR>Lagavulin. Who cares about Russian rubles? Dried Russian
rubles?
<P>Mark Jones Friday Sept 18,98:
<BR>"But today the FT estimates that the true Japanese bad debt problem
is
<BR>even worse, and at $1.21 bn is now approaching 30% of GDP."
<P>Doyle
<BR>????$1.21bn???? I've heard different stories, but I think they
can
<BR>handle 1.2 billion. And don't they have socked away something
like 7
<BR>trillion $. What I wonder is if the Japanese think they can manage
<BR>while the U.S. gets a taste of stock market jitters.
<P>Doyle
<BR>So I think because of this sort of accounting error Mark you ought
to at
<BR>least offer Max Lagavulin odds. 2 to 1?
<P>regards,
<BR>Doyle Saylor</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>--
<BR><A HREF="http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~jones_m/frontline">http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~jones_m/frontline</A>
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