Word: dowe
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...Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization, the bureaucrats may not have accomplished all that much last week. The chaos that surrounded them did. In this moment of triumphant capitalism, of planetary cash flows and a priapic Dow, all the second thoughts and outright furies about the global economy collected on the streets of downtown Seattle and crashed through the windows of NikeTown. After two days of uproar scented with tear gas and pepper spray, Americans may never again think the same way about free trade and what it costs...
...globalization will now come into focus as clearly as the familiar arguments in favor of it--that freer trade creates jobs for everybody and lower prices for consumers. Indeed, free trade has been an important reason for the '90s boom. Even as Seattle assessed the damage on Friday, the Dow was soaring nearly 250 points on news that the unemployment rate was stuck at its 30-year low. But the protesters were in Seattle to insist that globalization has become another word for capitulation to the worst excesses of capitalism, a cover for eliminating hard-won protections for the environment...
Since 1950, those three months have produced more market gains than the other nine months combined. And we're at it again. Since Oct. 31, the S&P 500 is up 5.2%, the Dow 5.2%, the NASDAQ composite a heady 19%. Yet many investors are sitting on the sidelines, waiting out the Y2K fiasco. (You know, mayhem that would make Moses proud when computers misread 00 as 1900 on Jan. 1.) Yes, stock prices could unravel if Y2Khaos really occurs, or if anything else for that matter ignites a panic. Can you say higher interest rates? But serious jitters seem...
...sure about his melt-up prediction: a 20% Dow gain in the first quarter, Cleland forecasts. But I buy into the case for a strong market big time. Many companies fund their pension obligations in January, giving the market a boost. And there really is a January effect. Stocks that had been sold purely to lock in tax benefits the previous year tend to get noticed and bid higher early in the New Year, often resulting in a rally led by small stocks. There will have been plenty of tax selling by the end of this year. Roughly...
...Although the Dow later backed off the record high, the euphoria may be a product of a paradigm shift in the shaping of economic indicators. After all, it seems counterintuitive that wage inflation wouldn't increase with the ever-expanding job market. "But this may show some things about the new economy," says Baumohl. "Increased productivity means that even though new jobs are being added, the prices of consumer goods aren't rising. And a growing number of employees are being at least partly rewarded in ways that don't show up in hourly wage inflation figures - extra benefits, bonuses...