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To: LPS5 who wrote (59)	7/15/2002 1:57:25 AM
From: dannobee	Respond to of 2534

It's not that the government lied to us, it's just that they used pro-formas...or were we duped by their EBITDA? Who would have thought that EBITDA really stood for Earnings Before I Trick Dumb Auditors? From the current Enron and WorldCom imbroglios, to the S&L scandal, to the huge Y2K infusion of liquidity supplied by the Fed, and the resulting NASDAQ bubble, the root cause stems from governmental (or quasi-governmental like the Fed) intervention. The crooked E and WorlCon from government regulated, then haphazardly (semi)deregulated markets, and the S&L scandal from the moral hazard created by over doubling the FDIC insurance. These bubbles were just the latest free-for-all. Think back of the railroad barons in the late 19th century. The government was giving land away to railroad barons, in exchange for the right of the citizens to be exploited by the same companies. Many people "invested" in that bubble, and when the bubble burst, the result was the same as we're seeing today. The resulting lack of interest now in capital markets by Joe Public was very predictable. His attention span is only as long as the next get-rich-quick scheme. Now he's probably licking his wounds in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, or buying government endorsed lottery tickets, waiting for the next Ponzi scheme. The game's the same as it has always been, only the names change; the more things change, the more they remain the same.