Easy To See In Hindsight

It’s easy now for most people to look back at the dot-com stock bubble and recognize it as what it was, a greater fool pyramid scheme. A lot of good this Monday morning quarterbacking does for those who relied on investment advisors who were too stupid to see through the phony market back when it counted.

Unfortunately, historical memory is so short in this country that few will recognize it when it happens again, which is the only way that people can be warned about it. As someone who received a ton of criticism during the dot-com bubble for taking a contrarian approach and refusing to buy into its bogus assumptions, I don’t have much hope of things being very different next time around.

What never ceases to amaze me is how people who have been so incompetent in the past can even stay in business. For example, will toe-sucker Dick Morris’ ineptitude in analyzing the just completed political campaigns hurt his lucrative TV and writing career? Not likely. Similarly, how can any financial advisor who promoted dot-com stocks even have any clients left? Anyone who is foolish enough to continue relying on advice from any financial professional who fell for the dot-com bubble will receive no sympathy from me when they lose even more of their money.

KMK

Scripted

If you’ve ever listened to a telemarketer’s spiel, it’s obvious that s/he is just reading from a script. Often times the callers are actually incarcerated prisoners (a commonly used labor force by companies that think telemarketing is a useful tool for their business) with a very limited command of the English language.

In the spirit of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry asked a caller for his phone number so he could be called back, a person in The Netherlands has come up with an amusing full script (in English) that can be used in response to those pesky calls. This might be more fun than just hanging up on them or asking them to hold for a minute and leaving the phone sitting for half an hour.

KMK

Cracking Down

IRS and the Justice Department have been busy nailing more tax protestors and promoters of these schemes and sending them to prison. One of the first ones mentioned in this article actually used to work for IRS and expected a jury to believe his story that he didn’t know his own income was subject to taxation.

IRS needs to make sure that this news is disseminated as widely as possible. A good place to start would be on the websites for the protestors. A welcoming message something like “This site is currently unavailable while its owner serves his sentence in federal prison for tax evasion” would go a long way in informing curious people as to the consequences of following the leads of these charlatans.

KMK