That was then, and now is now. With stock markets the world over plunging in an interlocked world, the Tel Aviv exchange has been going up and down rather erratically, more down than up, but nothing serious compared to most of the big guys.
Or compared to the not-so-big-guys, either. Here's a report at the well-known-Zionist-propaganda-station, the BBC: Middle East stock markets plunge. It's the usual doom and gloom, except for this:
While billions of dollars were wiped off share values in the Arab world, the Israeli stock exchange rose sharply after the central bank cut interest rates...Meanwhile Israel's TA-25 index rose by nearly 4% after the Bank of Israel announced a 0.5-point cut in its base rate to 3.75%. Its tech stock index performed even better with a rise of 6.75%.
OK, it's the stock market, what goes up today can go down tomorrow. But then again, perhaps we're really doing something right? Perhaps even better than most others? This might be why our economy has been growing faster than most of Europe and America since the beginning of the 1990s; it might explain why the Shekel insists on rising and rising and rising?
I'm not an economist by any measure, but here are some things that may have helped: we're still enjoying the effects of the gigantic wave of immigration from the disintegrating Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Binyamin Netanyahu's Milton-Friedman-inspired policies earlier this decade put new pizazz in the economy just as the effect of the immigration was beginning to wane. Hi-tech innovation fits perfectly with the chaotic insistance of Israelis never to do things the standard way if a short-cut can be devised, coupled with their intense determination to push so as to better their conditions.
1 comment:
FROM CAROL HERMAN
I bought Shamir Optical, through Schwab. So one of the benefits for Israel's stock market, is that information circulates into America. And, the stocks have symbols where you can follow them, even if you're not ready to buy.
As to the "marketplace" going up and down, right now there are billions being used to "flood in orders."
Recently, I learned that "naked shorts" means you don't even have the stocks when you're selling them! (To sell short? It was assumed you'd borrow these shares. Which is why big brokerage houses hold onto YOUR shares. You no longer keep this stuff in your vault.)
But "naked" means you're gambling and you didn't even bring your wallet into the house.
That Israel's shares are "rather stable?" Nobody's got the shares to short. And, "going naked" isn't going to impress the big houses. From Japan, throughout Asia, and giving it to England, as well.
While I notice that the much touted Euro isn't worth as much as the American dollar.
We'll probably have these fluctuations until election day. While Pelosi is trying to drop in $150-billion into an emergency "help the economy" package. (At least it will definitely cover extended lengths of unemployment time.)
You just can't go back to the Great Depression! Back then, when a man was out of a job, he and his family STARVED.
America is having an "ugly election" with "ugly ramifications.
But it seems to have taken the pressure of Israel. Even Olmert stays put. (Or travels to russia.) Without the flaming articles in the press accusing him of "irregularities" with his travel receipts.
Such minor stuff when you see the big guys entering the casinos ... and you watch the prices of stocks dropping like rocks.
Ya now what? Off to the side there are lots of people waiting for bargains. They want to shop before Christmas ... at the prices you see when that holiday passes. (You have no idea how jammed up the shopping malls get!) The best bargains? Just stay home. The madness will pass.
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