Prologue

Why this affects you

No matter if you traipse to the Street every day to make your living, or stay in the Battery with your drinking buddies; no matter if your Mummy and Daddy invested all they had (and for your college education) in stocks that went bust, or you live atop a mountain in Micro Amnesia; you are affected.

There are now millions upon millions upon millions of miles of glass fibre-optic cable strewn across the earth and lying at the bottom of the seas of this planet. Not 10% of this cable has been ever used. Global Crossing alone is responsible for 1.3 million miles of glass fibre-optic cable in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Global Crossing has no customers for this product.

All told, the United States of America now has nearly 40 million miles of glass fibre-optic cable buried in its meadows, under its highways, its fields, and in its lakes and mountains. Not 10% of this cable has been ever used.

The combined capital drain of the telecom bust is now estimated to be in excess of $2.5 trillion. That's a 't' there - 'trillion' - not million or billion. One thousand billion dollars.

An industry with too many players, too much product, and not enough customers, telecom has after its artificially inflated 'boom' decreased its expenditures by approximately 25% per year. Telecom's market value has decreased by over 60% during this time.

The world has gone bankrupt on these haywire companies - and bankrupt in more than finances. As the NYSE collapses, so do foreign exchanges. As the NYSE hits new lows, London and Tokyo shake. As the stock markets world-wide tremble, even more jobs are sacrificed, even more fortunes are lost.

So do not pretend, even in your wildest dream, that the adolescent shenanigans of Ken Lay, Joseph Berardino, Bernie Ebbers, Scott Sullivan, Carl Icahn, Henry Blodget, Jack Grubman et al do not affect you. For they do. And they do more than that: they threaten your very existence, your very life as you know it.