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Checkmate

How good friends kill one another

Walter Scott, billionaire and CEO of Nebraska Kiewit, funds one James Crowe in 1989 to start MFS Communications. Six years later Warren Buffett and Scott are in Ireland and Buffett invites best friend Bill Gates to come over. Bill does, and he tells them all about this thing called the Internet. Back in Nebraska, Scott tells Crowe to buy Internet carrier stuff.

So Crowe buys UUNet. UU is then run by John Sidgmore. UU is then owned to 14.7% by Bill Gates through Microsoft. Gates tells Crowe he will sell his piece if Crowe promises to keep Sidgmore. Crowe agrees, and now Sidgmore owes Gates a favour.

Then only months later Bernie Ebbers enters the picture. He buys MFS for $14 billion, making Crowe, Scott and Sidgmore instantly wealthy.

But Crowe does not want to work for Ebbers, so he quits three weeks later. Sidgmore stays, along with Scott Sullivan. Crowe is now back in Omaha.

Crowe next joins the board of Qwest, run by Joe Nacchio, but after a while quits even Qwest and gets $3 billion from Scott to start Level 3. Crowe recruits 18 of his former suits at MFS. Now Ebbers and Nacchio are both pissed off at Crowe.

Then a couple of years ago Sidgmore tries to buy Nextel, but Bernie kills the deal an hour before closing. Microsoft then owned about 5% of Nextel. Sidgmore is now pissed at Bernie, and quits his day job. Gates is probably pissed at Bernie too.

Last month Sullivan admits to book cooking, Sidgmore takes over WorldCom, fires Sullivan, and takes shots at Bernie for fucking WorldCom up. And Qwest was involved in the WorldCom scam, and so Qwest is going down now too, and Nacchio has been booted.

Now Crowe gets $500 million from Buffett and Buffett's friends.

But Buffett is one of Bill Gates's closest friends.

Sidgmore, as a return favour to Gates and a way of fucking with Bernie, can conceivably sell part or all of WorldCom to Crowe's Level 3. This would be a double kick in the balls for Bernie. Then, with added cash from WorldCom customers, Crowe could buy Qwest too - and thereby fuck Nacchio.

This Level/World/Qwest monster could then drive AT&T into insolvency - and then Crowe could buy AT&T too. The Omaha boys would then have a near monopoly in US long haul fibre networks.

At which point Gates would get back to Buffett, who might not want to be in this business anyway. Gates has the money to buy it all. And he would then own the Internet.

Checkmate.

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