[.ca] Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist (ISBN 0471660612)

UNDER THE WIRE:
A lot of us -- and I must include myself to some extent -- were dazzled by all that apparent growth. I always thought that there was a lot of hype out there, but never saw the complete train wreck coming. From Malik's book it sounds like Gilder didn't either, and -- it seems to me -- that as the wreck was approaching he was screaming "full steam ahead." It's too bad really, because in the end some of Gilder's predictions about wasting bandwidth may well turn out to be prescient. But as that famous quote from Keynes said, "In the long run we're all dead." What the industry really needs as a replacement to Gilder is someone more like an Old Testament prophet -- that is someone who can at the same time chastise and point specifically to the right path. (Gilder was more of a psalmist -- singing praises to the Lord and making us all feel good about ourselves.) I think our new prophet is also going to have to talk a lot less about raw growth and a lot more about where value is actually to be found.

So good you will cry at the stupidity.:
This is a good read for those who want to know how cycles come and go in the economic world and how those in the right place at the right time with shaky ethics and/or poor strategic skills can get filthy rich. The sheer stupidity of investors, bankers and "yes men" employees is stagering and worth the price of the book just for this alone.

Like Reading Your Obituary in Living Color:
I enjoyed the book very much. Chapter by chapter Om Malik gives the reader story by story of leading companies during the late 90's early 2000's and how they were brought down. Thought painful, as I along with many lost money during this period it brings home many basic investment thesis and bubble philosophies and makes for great read.

How the great telecom bubble grew and finally burst:
It was the best of times (money flowed like water), it was the worst of times (in retrospect, for those who didn't cash out at or near the top). It was a great human drama, and unlike Dickens, it was all 100% nonfiction - it really did happen. For anyone in the telecom industry who lived through the bubble, and now the depression, for anyone who invested in the telecom bubble, or for anyone curious about one of the greatest financial manias in human history, I recommend Broadbandits. Broadbandits profiles most of the key individuals and companies who helped inflate (and in many cases profit from) the telecom bubble, at a steady one company per chapter pace. Being in the telecom industry myself (still), I can state that Malik accurately captured the major stories I already knew, so I assume the rest of the book is generally factual. Although Malik focuses most of his anger on company bigwigs, he also admits that a bubble the size of this one could not have been created without active, willing participation from all sectors of the community: greedy disconnected CEOs, conflicted Wall Street and industry analysts, small investors who wanted to double their money overnight, and a unique confluence of regulatory and technological changes and advances. Broadbandits could have been better. Malik's principle sources are business press articles, and he has a fascination with documenting dollar figures, so he doesn't probe as deeply as he could into the reasons behind the actions he reports. The book was written hurriedly (to keep it topical), and there are more than a few data errors. Malik correctly cites Ravi Suria's seminal report on the debt and finances of telecom firms, which proved how the emperor of telecom stocks had no clothes (I remember almost crying for joy when I originally read Suria's report), but he missed Jeremy Siegel's equally important bubble bursting op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal proving that Cisco and other high P/E stocks were way overvalued and that we were experiencing another "Nifty Fifty" tech mania episode. Finally, to return to my Dickens reference, the book would be even more dramatic if it recounted more anecdotal stories and statistics of the small investors and employees who lost their money, retirement savings and jobs, to provide contrast to the well-documented stories of folks who cleared many millions during the boom. However, I do admit that with the title of Broadbandits, the focus is on the bigwigs who inflated and profited from the bubble. One more minor quibble: two of the people who praise Broadbandits on the back cover are thanked by Malik in his Acknowledgements. Conflicts of interest are everywhere! And just what did Malik do during his brief stint as a venture capitalist?

Highly Recommended!:
If you've even glanced at your retirement account balance or brokerage statement in the past few years, you no doubt have felt the effects of the broadband bubble. Less publicized than the tech wreck of 2000, the broadband meltdown was every bit as costly. Journalist Om Malik gathers the varied tales of telecom shenanigans anddf then adds up the stock sales so you can see just how much the broadbandits took. Malik's engaging and vitriolic writing style is fun to read, and he makes the intriguing assertion that the telecoms outdid the dot-coms in terms of sheer greed and gall. We suggest this book to any investor who hopes not to get burned, and to any executive responsible for safeguarding shareholder value.