Remora



Dave calls LI this morning to complain about our lack of posts.



What can we say? Here we sit, in the library. Our new computer is supposedly trucking to us as we write. Our old computer, with its invaluable (at least to LI) hard drive, sits at Mac Alliance like the corpse of the family's beloved pooch, with the service people gently urging us to do the needful, bury the damn thing, etc.



But let's send out a brief recommend to this Business Week article on the failed telecosm - or did the "cosm" in George Gilder's once much quoted phrase hint at a Bataille like orgy of waste, an economy of excess that we will all have to live with, now





The first two grafs present the grim picture -- or grim for some.



"Telecom has been a disaster for just about everyone.

Investors have lost some $2 trillion as stock prices

have tumbled 95% or more from their highs. Half a

million workers have lost their jobs during the past

two years. Dozens of debt-laden companies, from

Winstar Communications to Global Crossing, have

collapsed into bankruptcy. And on July 21, the

sector sank to a once-unimaginable low when

WorldCom Inc., the company that embodied the

industry's power and promise, filed the largest

bankruptcy claim in U.S. history.



"Yet a small group of CEOs and financiers managed

to save the family silver before the house burned to

the ground. Philip F. Anschutz, founder of ailing local

and long-distance upstart Qwest Communications

International Inc. (Q ), reaped $1.9 billion from

company stock sales since 1998. Former Qwest

CEO Joseph P. Nacchio sold $248 million worth of

stock before he was pushed out of the scandal-plagued company in June. Global Crossing founder Gary Winnick sold $734 million of his shares before

his company filed for bankruptcy in January. And former WorldCom CEO

Bernard J. Ebbers borrowed some $400 million from his company before he

was ousted in April--and that loan remains to be repaid."



The story connects the dots to the fall guy du jour -- Salomon Smith Barney's own analyst of the year, all around neutral observer, and general pig, Jack B. Grubman. The man with the Midas touch in 1999, although all that was glittering turned out not to be gold -- more like the stuff you pitchfork out of stables. Dross, as Freud knew, was the other side of gold -- too bad the investors Mr. Grubman sold down the river weren't conversant in Freud, in spite of his loss of stock in the last decade, eh?



As for the inventor of the Telecosm, hmm. Poor Old George Gilder is still plugging away at the spectator, and on the Telecosm lounge he purveys some recent email from believers who urge each other to keep the faith, to recognize that new paradigms sometimes take, well, hits. Big hits, in fact. Massive, tsunami size ones. I imagine less, shall we say, sanguine gamblers have abandoned the Telecosm lounge, and the Gilder Technology report, for the more secure predictions that emerge from horoscope charts, haroscopy, and other forms of divination.