Magellan's Log: The Good Old Days: New Economy Quotations

foolsm.gif (15168 bytes) The Good Old Days

A Few "New Economy" Quotations
Compiled by the Staff of Magellan's Log

Plus a Couple of Doses of Verbal Pepto-Bismol to Settle Your Stomach.

"Conventional economics is dead. Deal with it!
--Mark McElroy, IBM Global Knowledge Management Practice
Wall Street Journal, Summer, 2000.

The unadorned truth is really very simple: Outside of a petri dish, you won't find anything that grows as fast as the number of customers on the Net. Make your moves online now or nurse your wounds later.
--James Daly, Editor-in-Chief, Business 2.0, February 1999

"Because of downsizing and outsourcing, the 1990s witnessed a massive break-up of decision-making authorityu from a small number of monolithic corporations to an untold number of small firms and individuals.People, departments and divisions that once marched to a single drummer inside a single company became widely scattered across the economy, each making its own decisions on the basis of local information. As a consequence, economic shocks that used to cascade and magnify across the economy are now damped. 'At one time, if you had 50 or 100 giant companies doing the same thing in lockstep at the same time, you could destroy an economy,' says [David] Birch of Cognetics [Inc.]. 'But you don't have that anymore.'"
--Thomas Petzinger, Jr., Wall Street Journal, Summer, 2000.

As to the obvious objection from the stray myopic and dyspeptic dissenters (there are some in every crowd) that we're equating human progress with the upward spiral of stock prices, we say-- of course. Happiness is a rising stock price, human progress is a Dow above 11,000 and a Nasdaq above 4000.
--Alan Abelson, Barron's, Jan. 3, 2000.

"They're trying to fly an airplane by reading the gas gauge."
      --Timothy Askew, President, U.S. Aluminate,
         referring to economic theorists dealing with the "New" economy.
         Wall Street Journal, Summer, 2000.

"In a knowledge-based economy, there are no constraints to growth. Man alive! That's not something new?"
      --Michael Mauboussin, Managing Director of Equity Research,
        Credit Suisse First Boston
        Wall Street Journal, Summer, 2000.

The wonderful news about the Network Economy is that it plays right into human strengths. Repetition, sequels, copies, and automation all tend toward the free, while the innovative, original, and imaginative all soar in value. Our minds will at first be bound by old rules of economic growth and productivity. Listening to the network can unloose them. In the Network Economy, don't solve problems, seek opportunities.
--Kevin, Kelly, Executive Editor, Wired, June 28, 1999.

"Economists fail to realize that these improvements [computer- and Internet-enabled productivity increases] are reducing costs so radically as to enable entirely new ways of doing business."
--David Isenberg, isen.com.
Wall Street Journal, Summer, 2000.

Even though we haven't ended the business cycle, outlawed recession, or banished inflation, the business cycle really has changed. It is powered more these days by technology and trade. And this may well enable us to grow faster than before without renewed inflation. Perhaps the 4% rate of the past 12 months is too high--enough to justify interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve if things don't slow. But the 2%-to-2 1/2% speed limit is probably obsolete. In an era of stronger productivity growth, which may just now be starting to show up in statistics, the speed limit for the U.S. economy is probably 3% to 3 1/2% a year.
--Stephen B. Shepard, Editor-In-Chief, BusinessWeek, Nov. 17, 1997

Predictions Made in Barron's, Jan. 3, 2000, for where the Dow would be on Jan. 1, 2001:
      Stuart Freeman (A.G. Edwards): 13,000.
      Greg Smith (Prudential Securities): 13,000.
      Byron Wien (Morgan Stanley): 12,500.
      Abby Joseph Cohen (Goldman Sachs): 12,300.
      Marshall Acuff (Salomon Smoth Barney): 12,200.
      Douglas Cliggott (J.P. Morgan): 10,200.

"In a transparent marketplace, when everyone knows everyone's price, the price of everything trends downward."
--Thomas Petzinger, Jr., Wall Street Journal, Summer, 2000.

And finally, a couple of doses of verbal Pepto-Bismol:
1. Three econometricians went out hunting, and came across a large deer. The first econometrician fired, but missed, by a meter to the left. The second econometrician fired, but also missed, by a meter to the right. The third econometrician didn't fire, but shouted in triumph, "We got it! We got it!"

2. A man walking along a road in the countryside comes across a shepherd and a huge flock of sheep. He say to the shepherd, "I will bet you $100 against one of your sheep that I can tell you the exact number in this flock."

The shepherd thinks it over. It's a big flock so he takes the bet.

"973," says the man.

The shepherd is astonished, because that is exactly right. "OK, I'm a man of my word, take an animal."

The man picks one up and begins to walk away.

"Wait," cries the shepherd, "Let me have a chance to get even. Double or nothing that I can guess your exact occupation."

The man says sure.

"You are an economist for a government think tank," says the shepherd.

"Amazing!" responds the man, "You are exactly right! But tell me, how did you deduce that?"

"Well," says the shepherd, "put down my dog and I will tell you."

END

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