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from Gilder Publishing THE FRIDAY LETTER e-mailed weekly, for friends and subscribers =================================== | http://www.gilder.com/ | Issue 40.0/January 11, 2002 HEADLINES: * The Week/ A Corporate Crime Wave? * Friday Feature/ Wesbury Tops List of Forecasters * Friday Bonus/ Homeland Security * Storewidth Update * Poll Question/ The fall of Enron * Readings * Subscribe / Unsubscribe Information ~~~~~~~~~~ THE WEEK/ A Corporate Crime Wave? By George Gilder The Wall Street Journal January 11, 2002 Crime may have declined in the streets but, by the recent inflammation of the pundits, you would think there has been an outbreak of corporate criminality. The Internet, communications, and stock-market booms of the 1990s, it seems, were based on a pervasive series of felonious acts. A wide array of businesses, from Global Crossing to Loral, from General Electric to Enron, artfully inflated the worth of their shares through the creation of Potemkin businesses. If you believe the news coverage, corporate leaders are racing to despoil, mulct, defraud, poison, pillage, and ruin their own businesses, their nation's soils and waters, their retirement funds, and the world economy. This flood of factitious crimes, this parade of snaffled fat cats and scapegoats, happens every recession. Rather than ruing economic reverses as effects of public policy errors and miscalculations, public officials turn the tables and treat bankruptcy and crash as culpable schemes of particular white-collar criminals. Some of these alleged crime lords are familiar. Gary Winnick was party to a previous potlatch at Drexel Burnham, where he played a key role in financing the communications infrastructure through MCI, Telecommunications Inc., Turner broadcasting, and McCaw Cellular. Then he and his associates were alleged to have ravaged savings and loans by inducing some of them to buy those companies' high-yield securities before a government ban briefly destroyed their value. Finally Mr. Winnick boldly launched the world-wide fiber-optic networks of Global Crossing, with, it is implied, the intention of bilking investors and crashing bandwidth prices in what Fortune calls "perhaps the greatest executive ripoff in the history of enterprise" but what is better described as the most efficient global buildout in telecom history. Read the Entire Article at http://www.gilder.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Warren Buffet calls Value Line, "An incredible value! I don't know of another system that's as good." Outperforming the DOW by 15 to 1 for over 35-years - we've delivered 15,915% gains for investors in our portfolio of #1-ranked stocks. Click Below to try this legendary stock-picking system RISK-FREE for 13-Weeks! http://www.offeredby.net/hst/vline/1101camp/celeb/bnc.cfm?trkid=20005S13800 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FRIDAY FEATURE/ Wesbury Tops List of Forecasters From The Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2002: "Bearish Wesbury Tops List of Forecasters In a Rough Year for Economic Divination" "It was a rough year to be an economic forecaster. Few economists anticipated a full-fledged recession. Fewer still expected the aggressive response of the Federal Reserve that sent short-term interest rates to their lowest level in 40 years. Then the Sept. 11 terror attacks occurred, forcing everyone to revise their forecasts all over again. "But for a small group of bearish economists, everything seems to have gone as expected, leading them to the top spots in The Wall Street Journal's economic-forecasting survey for 2001. "Atop the pack was Brian Wesbury, chief economist at Griffin, Kubik, Stephens & Thompson, a Chicago investment bank that specializes in fixed-income securities. Long before the National Bureau of Economic Research finally declared last month that the U.S. had fallen into recession in March, Mr. Wesbury had factored recession into his forecasts. He called for meager economic growth in the first half of 2001 and then a contraction by the third quarter. As it turns out, he was right on." What the Journal forgot to mention, of course, is Brian's other perch -- chief economist of The American Spectator. Brian's columns are everything we want from the otherwise dismal science: sharp, solidly backed and infused with the deeper wisdom of the supply side. Brian brings political wits as well -- he was chief economist for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress during the epic budget battles with the Clinton White House. And now he's got a year's worth of bragging rights. By the way, last year's rampage notwithstanding, Brian for the long-term is among the biggest bulls around (which is another reason we like him). In the Journal's 2002 survey, he's one of only five economists -- out of fifty polled -- to peg the potential long-term U.S. productivity growth at greater than three percent. P.S. The Spectator economics crew is having a great season all around. Our great friend Larry Kudlow of New York's Kudlow & Co. (and now of CNBC's excellent "America Now," with Wall Street provocateur James J. Cramer) came in right behind Brian at number five in the Journal's 2001 forecasting derby. See the Spectator Interview with Larry in our April 2001 issue, accessible online at http://www.gilder.com/amspec/ ~~~~~~~~~~ Can quantitative analysis help you pick better stocks? Subscribe to Forbes Growth Investor and find out. Click below to get a free report https://commerce.cdsfulfillment.com/FMA/subscriptions.cgi?IN_Code=IML01G ~~~~~~~~~~ FRIDAY BONUS/ Homeland Security The Heritage Foundation Homeland Security Task Force was formed days after the September 11. Comprised of some of the best homeland security experts in the world, the Task Force was asked to make specific proposals on how best to eliminate the vulnerabilities exposed on September 11. The Task Force was co-chaired by two veteran policymakers regarding terrorism and homeland security: former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and L. Paul Bremer, Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism and Ambassador-at-Large for Counter-Terrorism under President Ronald Reagan. The Task Force this week released a comprehensive study entitled "Defending the American Homeland" that "calls for significant changes in the way government at all levels -- local, state and national -- works to counter terrorism." The report also focuses on: Infrastructure Protection and Internal Security; Civil Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction; Intelligence and Law Enforcement; and, Military Operations to Counter Terrorism. The entire 115 page report can be found, free of charge, at Heritage's website http://www.heritage.org/homelanddefense/welcome.html ~~~~~~~~~~ STOREWIDTH UPDATE Storewidth is exploding with terabytes of new content! Just confirmed, special presentations by Compaq Adeptec MTI Nortel Corvis Just announced: A Special bonus session with over 25 of the most talked about private Storewidth companies. VCs are salivating from coast-to-coast. More new speakers than we can list here. Check it all out at http://www.storewidth.com/conferences/ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Gilder.com Poll: Who would you pick as the 2001 person of the year? Over 50% of you picked George W. Bush Up Next: The fall of Enron is: A scandal in the making Just a business failure Let us know at http://www.gilder.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~ GOING, Going, going, but not yet quite gone... We still have a limited number of tapes and CDs from our 2001 Conferences -- Dynamic Silicon Conference, Powercosm 1 and 2, Storewidth, and the Gilder Technology Research Conference. Each set has 10 to 12 tapes and covers three days of conference material. Go to https://www.gilder.com/tapes and check out the great deals. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ READINGS Sprint's Next-Gen Showcase http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/tech/019071.htm Qualcomm Ships 3G Phones http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/hottopics/telecomm/056948.htm Telematics http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20020110S0084 NTT DoCoMo Falling Short of Target http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2102377,00.html 2 Computer Giants Hope to Avoid Pitfalls of Past Mergers http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/01/technology/01HEWL.html States Ask for No Delay on Microsoft http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/01/technology/01SOFT.html Qwest Stirs Protest Over Privacy http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/01/technology/01QWES.html Web Services http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&;c=Article&cid=FT3YN1801WC&live=true&tagid=ZZZC00L1B0C&subheading=information%20technology The Benefits of Being Small http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&;c=Article&cid=FT3MMWHV0WC&live=true EMC's New Battlefront http://www.forbes.com/2002/01/03/0103storage.html E-Commerce 2002 http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/15499.html Internet Taxes http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1014-201-8354714-0.html?tag=bt_bh 10 Personal Tech Trends http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/ptech/trend010302.htm The Next Computer Interface http://www.latimes.com/technology/custom/techtimes/la-010302cover.story Tools and Toys http://www.msnbc.com/news/676223.asp?0si=- AOL's Hacker Hole http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-8336037.html?tag=mn_hd Data Analysis Software http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO66913,00.html Top 10 Personnel Moves http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=10582 Optical Chips http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO67042,00.html .Net, Coming To A Platform Near You. http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/01/09/020109hnmsnet.xml Fight For the Living Room http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,49585,00.html The New iMac http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,49565,00.html China Goes CDMA http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173456.html -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- FRIDAY LETTER STAFF ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dave Dortman (ddortman@gilder.com) John Hammill (jhammill@gilder.com) Aaron Charlwood (acharlwood@gilder.com) CONTRIBUTORS THIS WEEK: George Gilder, Mark Ziebarth, John Hammill, Dave Dortman, Spencer Reiss, Sandy Fleischmann, Aaron Charlwood ADVERTISING INFORMATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Friday Letter is mailed each week to more than 150,000 subscribers and friends of Gilder Publishing, including industry leaders, financial professionals and individual investors. For information about advertising, contact Brian Cole, VP Business Development at bcole@gilder.com, tel 860-434-0614. FEEDBACK AND PROBLEMS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Send letters to the editor to Fridayletter@gilder.com For technical problems, please e-mail Fridayhelp@gilder.com You can also contact us via: Gilder Publishing, Customer Service 888-484-2727; outside the U.S.1-413-644-2100 1-413-644-2123 (fax) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- The Friday Letter is published weekly for subscribers and friends of Gilder Publishing. If someone you know would enjoy it, please feel free to forward a copy. To SUBSCRIBE please visit http://www.gilder.com/ Copyright 2002 Gilder Publishing LLC =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- --- You are currently subscribed to gilder-technology-report as: alewis@ect.enron.com To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-gilder-technology-report-661837S@earth.lyris.net
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