net revenues overstated?

[Chuck0]

John Gulick wrote:
> 
> Doug forwarded the following:
> 
> >Industry Standard - March 27, 2000
> >
> >Are Net Ad Firms Overstating Revenues?
> 
> I reply:
> 
> In today's SF Chron PaineWebber printed a huge full-page ad
> gently warning investors with significant "equity positions"
> in "new new economy stocks" to quickly seek the prudent advice
> of PaineWebber consultants. The ad implicitly debunked the myths
> that 1) no stock price/earnings ratios are too high and that 2) poor
> cash flows and debt don't matter since start-ups are financed
> by VC and new stock issues. Basically, the ad was a slightly
> less blunt rerun of the Barron's article Doug posted the other
> day. PaineWebber was trying to not be too alarmist, however --
> it implied that plummeting stock values and insolvencies in a
> few dot-coms will not plunge the economy into a recession or
> stem the ultimate triumph of informational capitalism -- as long
> as investors are keen enough to revamp their portfolios and let
> a few over-hyped dot-coms be sacrificed on the altar of market
> discipline.
> 
> So, the worse the news gets, the harder they party in SF's South
> Beach, as the impending apocaplypse looms. A professor friend of
> mine likened the Bay Area's economy to the "dual economy" in dollarized
> tourist zones of Mexico and Cuba -- if you work for a dot-com, own
> landed property whose value has been inflated by a dot-com, or have
> dot-com stocks (and are wisely beginning to bail out), then you're
> golden. In this environment bald social class differences tend to
> mean less than whether you're tied into/excluded from the cutting-edge/
> speculatively driven sectors of the economy. A clerical at a Santa
> Clara county, say, HMO, makes 15-20 grand a year and in a non-rent
> control environment her rent has doubled or tripled (if she's not staying
> in a homeless shelter). The secretaries at Cisco Systems w/stock options
> are millionaires and are buying sprawling homes in gated communities
> in Portola Valley and Los Altos hills. For the creative & skilled
> twenty-and-thirty somethings who can hop aboard the gravy train if they
> want to, politics degenerates into moral positioning -- do you sell out
> and join the ethically bankrupt world of speculative dot-coms, or do
> you hold fast to your principles and refuse to individually reproduce
> the collective mania (I am doing ny level best to remain content as a
> 1 grand-a-month lecturer at San Jose State University). What if jumping
> on board with a start-up means you'll be able to retire in five years (if
> you don't blow wads of cash on yuppie meals and condos) and travel in Tibet
> and Bali, and finally opt out of the rat race you fundamentally detest ?
> 
> People who don't even work for the dot-coms crash the free bacchanalian
> fests sponspored by marketing-conscious dot-com firms -- reminds me of a
> degraded version of the merchant princes of rival Italian city-states
> legitimating their hoards of wealth by feting the masses (see Henri Lefebvre
> on this).
> 
> The situation here gets stranger and more twisted by the day.

I suspect that it won't be long before S.F. erupts in widespread social
rebellion against the dot-com millionaires. I'm getting more and more
requests for posters from the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project, which
is run by my buddy Kevin Keating. I have a friend who's lived on Potrero
Hill for many years who is becoming distraught that rising rents may
force her out of San Francisco. She's a graphic artist who was nominated
for a Hugo last year.

Maybe we can get the Eugene anarchists to come down and show the rabble
in S.F. how to take back their city.

<< Chuck0 >>

This was the year *everything* changed.

      -- Commander Ivanova, 2261

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