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BRIEF: The world stock markets have seen their worst downturn since the great depression over 70 years ago. Heavy losses in the telecommunications and media industries started what has been a three-year decline. The Dow [Jones average] lost 38 percent in the past three years with other indicators such as London's Financial Times Stock Exchange index losing 43 percent. While the world's markets have lost in some cases nearly half their volume, some companies are doing well. These companies tend to weather hard times in two different ways: shifting labor to cheaper markets and by receiving large government contracts. At six percent, unemployment in the United States is at its highest since the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994, as more companies have shifted to cheaper labor markets. Manufacturing employment has sunk to its lowest level in 40 years. Many investor businesses are apprehensive because of what they call "the war fear," citing the potential war on Iraq, the war on terror, and now possibly North Korea. Some businesses are apprehensive but others, like Kellogg, Brown and Root in Houston, are cashing in. Kellogg, Brown and Root or KBR, a Houston bases subsidiary of Haliburton, has been awarded logistics contracts from the Pentagon. They received a $300 million contract to build permanent detention facilities in Guantanomo Bay. The construction, done mostly by Philippine and Indian workers cost about $23 million. KBR keeps the remaining $277 million. KBR's newest contract is for 10 years and according to the Army's Support Operations Command, the contract is "open-ended with no estimated value." Other investors, not based in the military industrial complex, are not so optimistic about the world market in 2003. E-mail David Stiles at stiles138@yahoo.com . This story was broadcast on January 1, 2003.