The Internet Money Machine

Question: What would a bubbly 1998 peek at Wall Street's Internet craze look like, circa 2000? A) Tragedy? B) Triumph? C) Ancient history? Depending on whether you rode the bull to new economic heights and did or didn't park your monetary carcass in less volatile stocks during the last 12 months would, of course, influence your choice of "A" or "B"; in either case, "C" is still absolutely correct. Filmed by the BBC and featuring BBC correspondent Richard Quest, whose enthusiastic flogging of Internet stocks makes P.T. Barnum sound like Casper Milquetoast, The Internet Money Machine is a superficial, half-hour news episode that interviews a handful of nouveau riche (day traders, twenty-something dot-com millionaires, lip smacking brokers) who spout the crazed optimism of the day. Case in point: theglobe.com, held up here as possibly the next Microsoft. Although the stock price rapidly rose to $40 soon after its IPO in 1997, shares of theglobe.com have plunged in value; today, the stock often trades for under $2. Neither a particularly insightful look at the early days of the Internet stock stampede, nor--thanks to its glib of-the-moment reporting--a good historical overview of the period, this is not a necessary purchase. Or to put it in economic terms, The Internet Money Machine is not only wildly overvalued at $149, it wouldn't even rate a "buy" recommendation at $19.95. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)