Trinidad Chronicles

I have diarized some of the highlights of my trip in my child-like fashion (I will send you folks of the text spliced with my trip photos later):

February 7th, 2002

This post has little to do with fast money, safe investment, helpful Prozac, pixilated investors, or evolving zygotes. It is simply my holiday chronicles.

Here I am. No, no longer at the waiting lounge. Here, at seat 12 C. Watered, fed, refreshed, and entertained. Well, not quite. It is now 12 hours later, and the posting is from San Francisco.

The wife and I just suffered through 'last minute madness' in Hong Kong.

I had finished off a straightforward proposal on a scheme I know nothing about, based on a scrambled explanation given to me 2 days ago by a confused mind, but only read last night at 11:00pm, after an unrelated 1-hour 5-party phone conference with disgruntled and Kenneth-ed China power investor, and managed to go to bed at 2:30am.

My wife had a meeting at noon with her client and a potential investor shortly before our airplane was due to take-off, and because the meeting may save the client magazine group from going belly-up in February.

My staff was not able to locate a copy of the book "F.I.A.S.C.O." in Hong Kong.

I had a lunch at the Foreign Correspondents Club with a four friends. We predictably talked about Enron, Global Crossing, Japan, girls, Japanese girls, evil Axis, GE, pension funding, accounting, Euro, and what would cure economic malaise. The last subject matter took all of 2 minutes to open, discuss, and close, as no one had any ideas. The pals feebly uttered, unconvincingly received, and decisively rejected deficit spending and credit creation. A previous non-believer in gold hoped that NEM would fall back to 20 to allow him one more chance to repent. There then was much giddy laughter and childlike delight, some private thoughts, and possibly decisions by some.

I just had an exciting dream in which one of the four engines of the plane was on fire, lots of hullabaloo, vibration, and dramatic sense of end. I did reach for my wife's hand as the captain jettisoned the flaming engine. I enjoyed waking up from the dream. It is very satisfying to be alive.

February 12th, 2002

This is a Vacation Chronicle rant. Today is my sixth day here. I have spoken to a bunch of folks, ate dinner out for four nights, read one issue of Barrons, and watched 15 minutes in total of CNBC. Now I am an expert on the US of A:0)

I actually think I see what is going on, which means that I am probably wrong.

The FED has flooded the system with liquidity much as the Emergency Room doctor fills the gunshot shock patient with IV solution and whatever else, replacing lost vital blood and life force with manufactured liquids, keeping the all markets functioning.

And so, what I am seeing, not surprisingly, is an operating economy serviced by a functioning financial market saved, for however long, from internal imbalances, exogenous shocks, avoiding a deep recession or shallow depression, at almost and possibly all cost.

Take today's observation for example, Kaiser Aluminum joins Global Crossing and Enron, even while Blockbuster, the video rental outfit reports above expectation earnings.

What is the message? Well, manufacturing is declining, service companies seem the way to go, until such service companies implode into an asset-less pile of accusations. Another observation? Global Crossing, in its multitudes, would presumably have bankrupted Blockbuster, have no chance, for now, even as there is nothing to watch on TV saved for news and sports.

Nearer by, the two bookstores adjacent to each other with about 4-5 staff, have no "FIASCO", and my Barns & Noble Internet ordered copy arrives, costing a total of USD 27 (incl. shipping) for a USD 12 book. I am trying to note the famous productivity equals profit equals economic growth solution in these simultaneous equations, and the answer is not yet obvious.

I suppose the 4-5 bookstore staff can disperse to work for FedEx, service www.bn.com servers, or become writers. I am not sure what will happen when ebooks take off, instigated by the MSFT, INTC and AOLs of this world.

It may be that the number of (worthwhile) books sold per year has not increased to any extent worth mentioning, certainly not justifying a financial market mania over the cyber book store operations, and that the Internet enabled book sellers have simply rearranged the chairs in their own favor, from the little guys, and they in turn, soon, will have their chairs taken away by others, selling the same number of books.

In any case, the system now is emphasizing consumer spending over productions, overseas capital inflow over domestic savings, and debt over equity, creating the set of conditions increasing still more the imbalances and thus adding to the susceptibility to external shocks.

The media and academic spin is that the strong USD is a free lunch with no bill to settle for all times, and so, invest, the water is safer than when NASDAQ was at 5,000. False and true.