Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
During the heady late 1990s, Wall Street investment firms and bankers deliberately hyped Internet startup companies with no prospect of financial success, bilking countless small investors out of their money. This PBS documentary explains how it all worked, from the "roadshows" used to line up initial capital to the strategy of launching a new company, watch its stock price spike, and selling before the inevitable downturn (known within the trade as "flipping"). The "grandest irony," according to Frontline producer Martin Smith, is that "the Internet comes along and it promises democratization. It's all about you and me get equal access to the same information at the same time. That was the promise. And now we're investigating a scandal in which the bankers playing by the old rules decided who was included, who was excluded, who got information, who didn't get information."
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