The Enron-ing of Telecom

From the NYTimes:



Traders Also Swapped Broadband, Data Show. Big energy trading companies created the appearance of activity as they tried to build a market for trading high-speed communications capacity.


I never quite understood why telecom companies so badly overbuilt transmission capacity. (I know, I know — venture capitalists, who as a group are as dumb as squirrels, goaded them into it. Still…) This may be one reason: Enron and its ilk made it look like there was a demand for all that bandwidth.


It’s stuff like this that gives capitalism a bad name.

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