December 23, 1998
Get Used to It: Insanity Rules
By Joe Queenan
The putatively "insane" valuation of Internet stocks such as
Amazon.com is
one of the hottest topics of discussion in America today.
After all,
Amazon.com is losing money hand over fist, faces competitors
who have
virtually no barriers to entry, and is in a business where it
has always been
hard to make a buck in the first place. So, value investors
(who these days can
be defined as people who actually look at the price of a
stock before they buy
it) just shake their heads in dismay: How, they wonder, did
the stock market
turn completely insane?
The jury is still out on the ultimate fate of outfits such as
Amazon.com. But one
thing is certain: If investors have gone bonkers in the U.S.
as we approach the
new millennium, they have not done so all by themselves. All
across the
country, in virtually every facet of life, madness rules.
Things got off to a rip-roaring start last January,
when the public learned that the president of the
United States had had an affair with a 21-year-old
intern. Historically, fooling around with a
thong-clad intern while you're married to a tough customer
like Hillary Clinton
has been viewed as insane. But then again, so is lying about
it under oath.
The zaniness seems to be getting worse. Just last week, the
House of
Representatives voted to impeach Mr. Clinton less than 48
hours after the
commander-in-chief ordered massive bombing attacks on Iraq.
No matter
how you cut it, this must seem just a tad nutty to the rest
of the world.
The very same day, the Speaker-of-the-House-to-be announced
that he
would relinquish that post and end his political career after
admitting to several
extramarital affairs. Frankly, the idea that a man would seek
the Speaker's
position knowing that he had all these skeletons in the
closet -- and also
knowing that the press would be out looking for them --
attests to a certain
kind of dementia.
Clearly, insanity isn't confined to the political arena. A
few weeks ago, the Los
Angeles Dodgers awarded a seven-year, $105-million contract
to Kevin
Brown, a power pitcher fast approaching middle age, who has
averaged 12
wins a year throughout his major league career. Now, that's
insanity. This
occurred a few weeks after the New York Mets had gone out and
re-signed
Bobby Bonilla, a player so despised by the fans and the media
that they had
traded him away three years earlier. Again, insanity.
Meanwhile, over in the National Basketball Association, a
cabal of fabulously
wealthy athletes has sabotaged an entire season because they
are hell-bent on
getting even richer. Oddly, the legions of bench-warmers, who
cannot afford
to lose an entire season's wages, have allowed the superstars
to control the
negotiations and basically put them out of work for the next
ten months. Once
again, madness rules.
Lunacy also reigns in the entertainment industry. (What else
is new?) Having
achieved a huge success a couple of years ago with Babe, a
heartwarming film
about a lovable Australian pig, Universal Pictures decided to
make a dark,
depressing sequel set in Manhattan, and to put it in theaters
over Thanksgiving.
That same studio had just released a three-hour film about
death starring Brad
Pitt, a glamour boy who has trouble acting for even 30
minutes at a time.
Nuts!
Anyone seeking a glimmer of sanity in the movie business will
be crushed to
know that the biggest hit of the fall was The Waterboy, in
which Adam
Sandler plays a moron. (The role was not a stretch for
Sandler.) Immediately
after The Waterboy's status as a hit was confirmed, an
official at the Fox
network announced that his company needed to start producing
TV shows
resembling The Waterboy. In other words, television needs
more shows that
will appeal to morons because it doesn't have enough already.
Insane.
Finally, the hands-down winner of The Most Insane Magazine
Cover Award
had to be Newsweek's profile of Nicole Kidman whose "fight
for privacy"
coincided with her appearing nude on Broadway (and in
London's West End)
in a play called The Blue Room. Traditionally, people
fighting for their privacy
do not take off their clothes in public, and never in New
York. Unless, of
course, they are insane.
The long and the short of it: Insanity is not confined to the
financial markets.
Sure, the idea of constructing an investment philosophy based
on the theories
of two Nobel Prize-winning economists is sheer lunacy, but no
more so than
having Luciano Pavarotti and the Spice Girls appear on the
same stage in a
PBS fundraiser. The more closely you look at contemporary
American life, the
more you realize that in this republic, the lights are on,
but nobody's home.
Which makes it surprising that Amazon.com's stock hasn't
already hit 1,000. |
