>Over deep-fried chicken at the R & D Luncheonette downtown on North Duke
>Street . . .
Ah, the atmosphere! I'll try again to send a comment that got swallowed by
the ether on Wednesday. In the summer of 1998, when the markets were
falling in response to the Asian crisis some of the big name stock
analysts were pointing to the still huge inflows of institutional money
from retirement accounts as a bulwark against a catastrophic crash. I
downloaded some demographic breakdowns of the U.S. labour force and
fed them and historical participation rates into a spreadsheet to estimate
when the inflows could be expected to peak. The answer was right about
now. What this means is that while potential investment money is still
flowing into retirement accounts, the rate of inflow is no longer
increasing and may even have started to decline.
A ponzi scheme requires an increasing rate of inflow of new money.
Tom Walker
(604) 947-2213
