$100,000,000,000.00...NOW THATS ALOT OF MONEY


its almost comical. in fact it is comical. its right out of the popular austin powers movie 'goldmember'. dr. evil threatens to destroy the world if the world organization doesnt pay him "one million, billion, gazillion...yen", which is about $100,000,000,000.00. yesterday, aol time warner announced that they took a 100 billion dollar loss due to bad investments and bad business. now when i was growing up a billion dollars was alot of money. today, while 100 billion dollars is a big number, it doesnt seem to affect people in the same way that maybe it ought to. to try and put it in prospective, its more than the gdp of many nations, its more than we are being told the war against iraq will cost, its the largest corporate loss in history(so far), its more than the tax relief package is supposed to save the american people in 2003, and its just plain a huge amount of money. and oh yeah, it was yours! somehow, somewhere, you and i own some of that loss. whether directly as an owner of aol stock or through some mutual fund that owns it, as almost all of them do.

even as we are told that the downturn in the economy is ending, huge multi-national, blue-chip companies are still marking down the assets that they over paid for during the boom. and the debt used to accumulate those assets is still there! amazing numbers, astounding mistakes, inconceivable corporate gaffs, unapologetic managements and complacent investors/owners just take it in stride like this is normal. and now that its done, everything will get better. what?! this cannot be. no outrage?! no economic backwash?! nobody gets fired?! what the hell is wrong with us?! are we so numb to whats going on that we dont even know how to react anymore? and now that a new bar has been set, i guess the next huge write-off will seem small and insignificant.

the numbers are absurd and the complacency is downright unbelievable. the american investor is being pummeled while rock star managers and corporate executives continue to exercise options and take home huge pay packages while your retirement savings continue to get stolen by these companies. and its not just speculative companies. its all the major corporations that operate in our 'fundamentally sound' economy. there is nothing fundamentally sound about this. in fact, it shows just how broken the system is and how much risk is still left to deal with. if this company owns assets that have been destroyed than dont others have the same problem? the answer is yes and the real questions should be how many and how much?

we will soon find out and my guess is it wont be pretty. but since we can handle aol's $100billion, the next write-off bomb wont seem so bad.

have a grateful day!

larry