Word: booming
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Consumers in their mid-50s to mid-60s spend 30% more on cars than any comparable group, and as the huge baby boom generation moves into that age bracket, carmakers are naturally catering to their latest tastes. Says Steve Barnes, 68, of Atlanta, owner of a snazzy Lexus SC 430: "I've been through the minivans and SUVs, and I was looking for a fun experience...
...asking again - can they keep it up? Because now that Alan Greenspan and every other economist has pronounced the economy to be pulling out of its whatever-it-was and headed back into boom times, the kind of recovery we get in 2002 - a fast-and-furious V-shape, a slow and grudging L, or worst of all, a double-dip W - depends on how much consumers can improve on their 2001 performance. And the worry is that after spending to beat the terrorists, shoppers have left themselves a very tough act to follow...
...economy could still use another boost. Businesses, whose after-tax profits dropped 10.6 percent in 2002 (the worst in 20 years) are still climbing back toward the black - and won't start investing, producing and hiring at boom levels again until they've been there awhile. Wall Street has begun to pick winners again, but a fast and full business recovery takes an influx of customers. If consumers already provided the recovery from the Sept. 11 shocks this winter (and cut a recession short in the process) can they really be expected to kick it up yet another notch...
DIED. JAMES TOBIN, 84, Nobel-prizewinning economist and adviser to President John F. Kennedy; in New Haven, Conn. A Yale professor and promoter of the Keynesian theory, which advocates government intervention to regulate economic cycles, Tobin crafted the Kennedy tax cut that spurred the boom of the early 1960s. His Nobel-winning portfolio-selection theory--which posits that investors do not simply seek the highest yielding assets but vary them according to risk tolerance and other factors--changed conventional thinking on how Americans spend and invest money...
...advantages Dell enjoys over giants such as IBM could prove decisive against Legend as well. Founded in 1984 by 11 computer researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Legend has rapidly grown into Asia's largest PC maker by riding a boom in mainland computer sales. Although it manufactures in China, where labor costs are cheap, it lacks Dell's economies of scale. Legend's revenue last year was $3.5 billion, puny compared with Dell's $31.9 billion. Dell's 17.6% profit margin similarly dwarfs Legend...