Posted on 12/24/2002 2:49:11 AM PST by Liz
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:10:47 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
It is true that two wrongs don't make a right. What Wall Street did to American investors this past decade was not only wrong - it was evil.
Because of unbridled greed, brokerage firms put out false research in order to steal from people who didn't understand the game. Wall Street cut itself in on lucrative initial public offerings that it knew would rise when foolish investors plowed into the stocks days too late.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Spitzer got Wall Street crooks to cough up $1.4 billion in fines to "punish" them.
I will be the first to agree that the people who fleeced everyone should have their assetts siezed, and should be doing hard time in the general prison population.
But investing is not a lottery. People do need to take responsibility and do the research, even if it means going though company's dumpsters. And by "research", I mean not just reading the breathless press releases, or listening to an "investment counseller" whose real objective is to collect fees and bonuses by churning portfolios.
I know otherwise intelligent people who always acted on their broker's "Hot tip" of the week without question.
I have even seen this activity on here, where "news" is reported, which turns out to be nothing but a pump-and-dump press release.
The People really have to act as if it is their money (It IS) and be suspicious and vigilant so as not to get caught in the next bubble, which is a nice way of saying "fraud".
Look at these dot.bombs that caught so many people..No business plans, No sales, No products, yet people stampeded to them, waving money.
I think it really started with Netscape. "We give the product away free, and are not sure right now how it will make money", yet everyone climbed on for the ride.
Actually, there were several people doing this. Crudele seems to be saying "I told you so", but he fails to mention one instance where he was speaking with any specific knowledge on the subject. Like many, he probably took a look at P/E's approaching 200 and thought things looked a little fishy.
Yes, corrupt firms and their analysts bilked billions, trillions even from investors. However, anyone who invested thinking we were in a "new paradigm", where a company didn't need to earn money to be valuable was just an idiot. Remember, with few exceptions (Enron the most notable), the books weren't cooked; you could see plain as day that a company was sucking wind.
The billion dollar telecoms sprung from nowhere, like Global X, looked too good to be true....and they were......
As for the hotshot analysts, how could anyone believe the likes of Jack Grubman who was sitting on boards like WorldCom that he was pumping or should I say pimping?
As they were saying on Main Street at the time of the stock market bubble, "Where are the investors' yachts?"
Oh yeah. Glad you mentioned it. The dot-com creators spent money like water on lavish parties and stuff that added zero to the bottom line.
Watching the "cutting edge" dot.bombs TV ads, it was hard to discern just exactly what they were selling. Turns out it was nothing. When they went belly up, their only assets were office furniture.
Got that right!
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