Word: sectored
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...Should I buy, say, an energy-efficient air-conditioner to suppress demand for Big Oil and save the environment? A Palm Pilot, to help restore hope to the tech sector? If I tell my cable company I want all the channels for six months, perhaps I can speed the maturation of broadband and help my employer meet its 3Q estimates (and maybe give those stock options a boost...
...props up sick companies with state funds, discouraging the kind of restructuring that would create more competitive businesses. Taiwan sailed through the crisis in 1997, but it is now reckoning with a Thai-style banking fiasco, albeit a less serious one. Taiwanese banks lent heavily to a sinking property sector, and now around 15% of their loans aren't being serviced...
...Sadly, there appears to be no magic stock or sector that's going to ride to the rescue. Unlike the crisis of 1997-99, which was limited to this region, the U.S. downturn leaves all economies stuck in neutral. On the principle of first in, first out, you could invest in the U.S. where the economy will likely rebound before anyplace else. Which American stocks make sense? The safest bets are companies whose products are always in demand, downturn or no downturn?pharmaceutical manufacturers, for instance, or big food companies...
...that aging populations can achieve sustained, accelerated growth is absurd?or a symptom of the arrogance of economists who ascribe low growth almost entirely to failures in economic policy, although policy tinkering has modest impact. As for the U.S., its demographics are O.K. thanks to immigration, but its private-sector debt levels and reliance on Asian savings to sustain its consumption habits are daily becoming more horrifying...
...reaction that results in a tornado in Texas. The interdependent world of Italian finance works in much the same way. Early this month, the automaker Fiat - admittedly, a rather large butterfly - joined in a hostile bid for Montedison, a conglomerate whose far-flung holdings include Italy's largest private-sector electric company. Such transactions would hardly seem to be the stuff of high drama. Yet that one move called into question the power of the élite investment bank Mediobanca - which owns 15% of Montedison - and started Italian investors buzzing about the future of businesses ranging from Europe's third...