Buy, Lie, And Sell High

The Market

from the it's-all-part-of-the-process dept

Following the dot com bubble popping there was a tremendous amount of time wasted trying to pinpoint exactly who to blame. Just about everyone had fingers pointed in their direction: venture capitalists, bankers, stupid retail investors, politicians, engineers, MBAs and plenty of others. Those stories have quieted down a lot lately, but they seem to have inspired at least one book. Salon is running an interview with the author of a book that blames the investment bankers for the dot com boom. The book is called Buy, Lie, and Sell High and the author has some interesting points in the interview. He blames investment bankers (and Alan Greenspan) for knowing that they were propping up the bubble, even though they knew the companies weren’t very strong. He also blames them for robbing the companies blind by underpricing the IPOs relative to demand to get that first day pop – which the press and retail investors seemed to love – but which really meant the company lost out on millions of dollars that went straight into the pockets of “friends” of the investment bankers. He also points out that, despite the “we’ll never do that again” talk coming from bankers these days, they absolutely loved the bubble, and are looking for ways to create a new bubble as quickly as possible.