If they should also desire to plug in Netscape instead, so much the better. Microsoft is warning that damage could result. 3M today heaped a lot of the blame on the situation in Asia, an argument that makes sense, says Chris Farrell, the St. Paul based economics editor for Sound Money. The dollar's up about 20 percent over the past two years, so with the high value of the dollar, it's more difficult to make your sales overseas. Asia does have an implication because if you're a major multinational corporation, it's a big market and also what is quite fascinating is some slower domestic sales growth, which is something that we're going to see more of in the coming year.
Management is blameless.
I'm a little too skeptical of that, and a lot of Wall Street analyst are skeptical and they're taking a pretty hard look at these corporate earning reports. Chris Farrell of Sound Money. 3M shares closed down 9 and a half percent today. More on that in a few minutes. The lower dollar hurt bond prices, pushing the yield on the 30 year treasury back above 6 percent again.