Word: witter
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Should that happen, the TIME board's numerical forecasts are not spectacularly gloomy. Stephen Roach, chief economist of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the giant investment firm, foresees the growth in gross domestic product slowing to an annual rate of 3.2% by the end of this year--vs. 3.9% for all 1997--and then to 2.5% by the end of 1999. Sinai expects 1.5% for all 1998, then...
...quick scan of Wall Street illustrates the debate. At Paine Webber, chief strategist Ed Kerschner holds the rosy view that stocks "have not been this cheap since October 1990." Chief guru Abby Cohen at Goldman Sachs similarly says, "Stocks are trading at undervalued levels." But at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, chief strategist Barton Biggs insists that "we are either in or on the verge of a bear market." And the wily investor Larry Tisch at Loews Corp. just reconfirmed a massive options bet on lower prices...
...stock market, which fostered a sense that slower growth lies ahead. And the wealth effect could greatly worsen matters if stocks really hit the skids. "We've got a market that's doubled in the last three years," says Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. "If you lose 10% or 20% after doubling, that's not real pain. But if you take this correction into the 25% range, the market could hurt more going down than it helped going up." That's because people often feel worse about their losses than good about their gains...
...Flint, GM is trying to boost profit margins by outsourcing, a source of contention. But the company needs to make great leaps, not incremental steps. Analyst Stephen J. Girsky of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter estimates that to get into fighting shape, GM would have to close three assembly plants, eliminating as many as 34,500 blue-collar jobs. Try negotiating that. And the company needs to close about 2,300 dealerships...
There are skeptics. Stephen Roach, chief global economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, suspects that e-commerce is being oversold, though he admits it's growing rapidly. "I question if it'll ever be big." He is right when he notes that e-commerce is no more than 1% of the U.S.'s $8.5 trillion economy; in fact, consumer online sales now account for only .2% of total retail. And e-commerce, Roach argues, is hardly on a par with the Industrial Revolution. "This is an intangible cerebral revolution, which is a lot harder to pull...