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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace (INSP): Where GNET went! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mikiespeedracer who wrote (26928)	4/17/2002 7:20:16 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 28311

That is quite true, MSR! And for the heck of it....ZNET has this to say today about the NY case and ML..... Was Merrill Lynch full of bull? Looks that way By David Coursey, AnchorDesk April 16, 2002 9:00 PM PT URL: zdnet.com In case you hadn't heard, a scandal is unfolding in which Internet stock analysts at Merrill Lynch are accused of selling their supposedly independent opinions to win business for the brokerage firm. In other words, these people profited--some of them mightily--by misleading the investors who trusted them. We know about these abuses because New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer recently filed a 37-page document with the New York Supreme Court. After citing an exhaustive series of incriminating e-mails, voice messages, and written documents, Spitzer wrote: "These communications show analysts privately disparaging companies while publicly recommending their stocks. For example, one analyst made highly disparaging remarks about the management of an Internet company and called the company's stock 'a piece of junk,' yet gave the company, which was a major investment banking client, the firm's highest ranking." AMONG SPITZER'S OTHER ALLEGATIONS: The charge that stock analysts' compensation was in part tied to their ability to drum up investment banking business for the firm. According to Spitzer, star Web analyst Henry Blodget's salary rocketed from $3 million in 1999 to $12 million in 2001--apparently because of his ability to bring home the bacon. I should point out that none of these people have been accused of any crimes, although the charges outlined in Spitzer's report do seem pretty damning on their face. But the filing was compelling enough to win Spitzer a court order requiring immediate reforms in how Merrill provides stock advice to customers, even as Spitzer's investigation continues and broadens to include other firms. My CNET Radio colleague Rob Black, himself a former stock analyst, believes Merrill is an aberration and the industry will turn out to be pretty clean. I hope Rob is right--he does, after all, know the insides of these companies reasonably well. But my bet is that Spitzer will find plenty of other stock shops whose name-brand Internet analysts enriched themselves and their favored clients while fleecing you and me. In a highly competitive industry, at a time when the usual stock-valuation metrics had been tossed out the window, I'd be shocked otherwise. WHAT'S REALLY GOT ME wound up about this is the fact that journalists were, in some ways, part of the scam. CNBC, CNN, daily newspapers, and even organizations like CNET routinely presented these analysts as experts in the Brave New Economy. News people aren't trained as stock analysts. During the Boom, we had to rely on outsiders to explain what was happening. We pumped them up and gave them a pulpit. All too often, we accepted what they said without examining what they said. We didn't bring to their utterances the same jaundiced eye we'd use to follow the doings of a mayor or a dogcatcher. All too often, we turned off the skepticism we're supposed to bring to everything we hear. Instead, we amplified the hype and profited from it, doing our customers--the readers, viewers, and listeners--a real disservice. After a time in which it could seemingly do no wrong, the tech business continues to weather the fallout. Every economy, even one as distorted as ours was, eventually self-corrects; our post-Boom recession is already lifting. Slower to lift will be the cloud that hangs over the tech business' credibility. I was glad that Enron wasn't a tech company--at least the scandal wasn't in our neck of the woods, ha ha! But now we have our own unfolding credibility scandals--first at Hewlett-Packard over the voting on the Compaq deal, now at Merrill Lynch. The credibility damage from the Merrill scandal, if it really includes much of the Internet investment industry, could make the money losses from Enron seem like small change.

To: mikiespeedracer who wrote (26928)	4/17/2002 8:59:11 PM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28311

He realized his dream, and then sold it to INSP! He got his millions, we got the shaft!

To: mikiespeedracer who wrote (26928)	4/23/2002 4:20:15 PM
From: tahoe_bound	Respond to of 28311

Re: Horowitz the bandit You will never, ever hear from him again. 2 years later, I still maintain the same thing. Funny how some still don't wanna believe they were taken hook line and sinker, that the "trillionaire" guru leader must still be sharing in all the emotional pain, must be planning some big coup to come riding to the rescue all over again and into the sunset of pro forma glory. Yeah right. Just a quirk of human nature I guess that admitting to being had by con men and salesmen is too much of a blow to the ego and being wrong is not acceptable. Got gold mining stocks? Ready for another bad year? New tech lows, here we come. Homebuilders and gold mining shares, up huge percentages. Starting to sink in yet? No, don't think so. Complacency still rules. What bear market? Lol. For some the late 90s will live on, in dreams and wishes. Just because the market doesn't cooperate means nothing to the "I am right" crowd.