Remora

As blood is to the mosquito, the vampire bat, the tick, the tse-tse fly, so is idiocy to Limited Inc. Naturally - yes, obviously, like your most predictable carpers, with the kind of grim satisfaction at all our most cherished, worst prejudices being realized exhibited by some harridan in a suburban subdivision, watching hubby come home from a drunk - we recommend that our readers go to the NYT article reporting the testimony of stockmarket analysts to the US Senate's investigation of Enron. The grafs that put us into a delirium of bloodlust are these:

"Eleven of 16 analysts who followed Enron were still rating it as a ``buy'' or ``strong buy'' as late as Nov. 8, two weeks after the Securities and Exchange Commission announced it had opened an inquiry into the company's accounting.

"``I did not own Enron stock,'' testified Anatol Feygin, a senior analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. ``I have complete freedom with respect to the recommendations that I make concerning any (stock) and my compensation is not tied to the recommendations that I make. ... I have never received any compensation in any form from any company that I analyze, including Enron.''

The analysts defense is that they are the stupidest people on earth. Because even slightly less stupid people, say some touched boy in a tribe that haven't developed a complete base ten counting system, can tell that an enterprise that goes from 90 to 2, whether the decline is measured in goats and chickens or dollars, is a losing enterprise. But Anatol Feygin, apparently, needs more information to make that kind of decision. Feygin is a veritable scientist.

Ah, but Limited Inc is just being cynical. Surely there is a reason, some reason, that we just don't understand, which justifies the Feygins of the world receiving compensations a thousand fold over your average MacDonald's burger flipper. There must be a class that explains this in some economics department. We don't understand economics, is what it is.