Falling Market Begins to Pinch South Florida Residents.

Publication: The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida) (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News)

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COPYRIGHT 2001 The Miami Herald

Byline: Gregg Fields

Mar. 18--For Jim Gall, it's beginning to look like the early 1990s all over again.

That's the last time a recession rumbled through South Florida, amplified by the aftershocks of the savings and loan crisis and the collapse of Southeast Bank and Eastern Airlines.

For Gall, an auctioneer, it was the best of times. Auctioneers, he says, do best when the economy doesn't. So his business was soft the last few years, with the economy and stock market going full tilt.

Now it's picking up again. "The pinch is on," Gall says.

The dropping stock market has shrunk the pumped-up portfolios that paid for paintings, palazzi and the perquisites of prosperity. People who thought the Internet bubble would last forever are having to deflate their budgets. And some are turning to Gall for help -- to sell the stuff off to the highest bidders.

"It's music to our ears," he says.

It was called the wealth effect.

Now it's gone.

In the late 1990s, as the stock...

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