Radsoft
 About | Buy | News | Products | Rants | Search | Security
Home » News » Roundups » Fibergate

The Short and Sweet

See if you can take it

So what really happened? In broad strokes, that is?

A cowboy named Bernie Ebbers, who had flopped as the entrepreneur of a chain of 'no-tell' motels in Mississippi, decided to try his hand at telecom. In a minute he'd bought MFS, MCI, and a slew of other companies. But Bernie had only one agenda: buy. He's so single tracked he's named his super-yacht 'Aquasition'. But when Bernie tried to buy Bill Esrey, the world reacted, and his stock started to plummet. And that was back in 1999 - three years ago. And Bernie didn't have enough customers, or revenues, so his stock started to hurt bad, so he told his friends Henry Blodget and Jack Grubman to keep pushing while he sold out, and today WorldCom is worth about 8 US cents a share and Bernie still has more than enough money to try again in the 'no-tell' motel business - and to entertain on his $60 million ranch in British Columbia. Good for him.

And then we have Gary Winnick. If Bernie was brash, Gary was the epitomy of disgusting greed. Gary used to outsource to himself for amazing million dollar fees to do what he was supposed to do as salaried CEO and member of the board of directors of Global Crossing. Gary got away with murder. He compromised the head of the Democratic National Committee and he compromised George Bush Sr so no one in Washington DC would ever come after him, and yet he is far worse than the relatively amateurish Ken Lay could ever hope to be.

And Gary's tease was a brilliant one - perhaps the best scheme since the industrial revolution. Self-centred consumers by the millions who have more purchasing power than they can manage will readily blur the distinction between want and need, so they will crave more phones, cellulars, PDAs, Internet access, DSL and cable and cable TV and - BROADBAND, and Gary promised he'd build the ultimate glass fibre-optic network under the seas of the planet - an unbelievable 1.3 million miles worth - and the only hitch is he never had any customers, never had any revenues.

But Gary was brought up in the school of Michael Milken, so he knew he didn't have to care about such niceties. Instead, he went out and addicted everyone else to his grand scheme and got over $20 billion in funding. And surprisingly exited with only half a billion himself. Poor guy.

That's the short and sweet.

About | Buy | News | Products | Rants | Search | Security
Copyright © Radsoft. All rights reserved.