Bud wiser

Jul 14, 2002 | 08:16 PM |

If you had bought $1,000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49. With Enron Corp., you would have $16.50 of the original $1,000. With WorldCom, you would have less than $5 left. If you had bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the 10-cent deposit, you would have $214. Based on the above, Melting Pot's current investment advice is to drink and recycle.

Peek-a-boo-boo

The U.S. International Trade Commission gets to view lots of corporate secrets as it evaluates complaints about imports said to be unprofitably cheap. Lawyers for both sides can peek, too--but not their clients or the public. Recently, the agency told Globe Metallurgical Corp. attorneys to erase some information from a public-version brief involving ferrosilicon. What outsiders now get to see is "Given these numerous conflicts in testimony, the commission should not castigate Mr. Beard, on the one hand, for his 'unconscionable' testimony and then, on the other hand, (...)." During 2001, 36 documents were retrieved or suppressed that might have disclosed confidential material to the public. The "one that got away" was something that an unidentified trade association faxed to 66 members before the ITC's kill-notice went out. Unrelated to that case, a repeatedly careless attorney was hit with a six-month suspension from dealing with unexpurgated ITC documents. None of last year's 36 problems involved anyone leaking data intentionally.

Not another bug hunt....