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![[F]](../_images/site.gif) New York Times on the Web Forums  Science
Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans
for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be
limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI
all over again?
    (1590 previous messages)
rshowalter
- 08:01am Mar 28, 2001 EST (#1591
of 1593) 
Robert Showalter
showalte@macc.wisc.edu
Key Reasons for Carefulness - And to Favor Factually and
Logically Correct Approaches and Communications:
The issues of reliability, and expected rates of return for
sociotechnical investment decision by real people set out in
#1394-1406 seem especially important now, and Im trying to proceed
with care, and enough time to do key things right, because of a
concern for right answers and stability.
Quick, cocksure, easy answers can seem the best ones, in the
short term, but when they start to fail, the costs can be immense.
Id like to refer to an ongoing business story, an aspect of which
made the NYT today:
. Lucent
Confronts Diminishing Expectations in Effort to Raise Cash ....
........ by SIMON ROMERO and RIVA D. ATLAS
" Lucent Technologies began selling $3.6
billion of shares yesterday in Agere Systems, its semiconductor
unit, to capitalize on a window of optimism in the stock market
even as concern mounted about Lucent's financial situation.
" Underscoring woes in the communications
industry, and especially at Lucent, the company sold 600 million
shares at only $6 each. Originally, Lucent had hoped to sell 370.3
million shares for as much as $20 each. Instead of raising $7.4
billion, Lucent will receive only $3.6 billion from the
offering.
" Obviously, Lucent is in a weak position" with
a need to raise cash, said Susan Kalla, a telecommunications
analyst with Trade.com, an online brokerage firm. "You have to
wonder how they're going to make up for the shortfall from the
offering."
> . . . . .
" Lucent and Morgan Stanley declined to comment
on the share offering and on their financial dealings with each
other.
. . . . . . . .
" Assuming that Lucent does not come up with a
plan to raise the additional $2.5 billion in the next few days,
S.& P. will most likely place the company's debt on watch for
a possible downgrade, he said. A downgrade from the agency would
mean that Lucent's debt would fall from investment grade to junk
bond status.
" Lucent did announce earlier this month that
it planned to sell its optical fiber unit, and that could raise
enough money to satisfy S.& .P's concerns, Mr. Hyman said.
" We need to see some execution from
management," he said. "Once the Agere deal is done and they sell
the fiber business, I'll breathe easier, but it's all on a wing
and a prayer right now."
" Robert Ray, the analyst who covers Lucent at
Moody's Investors Service, said yesterday that he was not
reviewing the company's ratings.
(Note: Players are likely to delete the "not" from the
previous sentence as a matter of course.)
" If both rating agencies downgraded the
company to junk bond status, it could raise the cost of the
company's bank financing.
" Lucent filed the most recent version of the
deal's offering document with the Securities and Exchange
Commission on Monday. One notable change was that the company
confirmed that Agere would have a "significant operating loss" in
the company's fiscal second quarter, said Steven Levy, an analyst
at Lehman Brothers.
Mistakes, whether due to inadvertent misjudgement, or deception,
carry very large penalties.
Those penalites occur when the percieved risk discount on what
is said or promised, which corresponds to a in
#1394-1406 rshowalter
3/23/01 5:30pm shift significantly below 1.
Significant rewards occur in the other direction, when the
percieved credibility of an "economic actor" (and in America, all
are economic actors) moves upward.
I'm moving, as carefully as I can, to guard my own credibility,
and to
rshowalter
- 08:07am Mar 28, 2001 EST (#1592
of 1593)
Robert Showalter
showalte@macc.wisc.edu
I'm moving, as carefully as I can, to guard my own credibility,
and to act in honorable, careful ways that augment it. If others on
the side of peace, stability, and clear information do this, and
carefully point out the deceptions, mistakes, cynicisms, and
brutalities of the forces of death in the world, including, I'm sad
to say, some forces in my own country -- then, after a time, major
shifts in power may occur. And they could be rapid.
It is taking me time to be adequately careful about some things.
This is a time of danger, but also a time of hope -- and a time for
work, and taking care.
Some positions of the U.S. Department of Defense and its leaders
are, on important issues, are as devoid of merit or honor as a
herringfish is of fur -- and there will be ways, with care, to show
that to a wider and wider group of people and organizations --
eventually including enough elected American officials, and enough
American voters, to make a decisive difference.
There are limits to how long it will be sustainable for
Department of Defense and its leaders to maintain the position that
. "we are right, because we say so, and you
can't check us."
That position can work for a while. Perhaps a long while. But it
is much less workable than it used to be, because in the new
internet world, less can be hidden. And the position is, inherently,
dynamically unstable.
Pardon me for moving slowly. I'm being careful. The arguments for
peace and effective communication are overwhelming in the world, and
we need to make them -- as I believe we ARE making them --
carefully, with stability, in a solid, logically incremental
fashion.
______
Right now, one of the things that means is that I have a lot of
reading, and preparation, to do. I'm working. And the recent posts
are most admirable and interesting !
rshowalter
- 08:09am Mar 28, 2001 EST (#1593
of 1593)
Robert Showalter
showalte@macc.wisc.edu
Amazing how fast my computer gets penetrated, after a period of
quiescence, when I make some of these postings.
  
 
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