Fed ineffectual so far...

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Mar 22 09:22:44 PST 2000


Enrique Diaz-Alvarez wrote:


>A little man on a little suit. On the other hand, it seems that the
>deluge of IPO scams is starting to have an effect:
>
>http://www.ntrs.com/rd/rd35/rd35fr.html
>
>(Click on March 20th economic comementary)

He's got a point, but more stock was still retired than issued last quarter, and credit conditions aren't yet hostile enough. Though things are probably tending in a more hostile direction on both scores.

Another negative: free cash flow for nonfinancial corporations (profits plus depreciation allowances less capital expenditures) has been pretty strongly negative for the last 2 years. This has been a pretty decent long-term leading indicator for the stock market, though of course Jordan says everything is still ok.

Doug



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