Dear Friends, Patriots, and Warriors of Truth:

Perhaps the time has come to reassess the great Internet revolution, and the flowering of a thousand companies in "the new economy," and perhaps it is time to reassess the smart-money boys telling the suckers and the Reubens sitting at their computers on a million cul-de-sacs in American Suburbia that they, too, can get rich over a fortnight. Perhaps the day has arrived when the lean and hungry types, the trustworthy soldiers of the Republic, and the gunmetal patriots, can say with assuredness and certainty that "the Great dot-com Swindle" has passed them by, too.

Like the Angel of the Lord passing over Egypt, the dark tidings of the "dot-com Swindle" are coming up on browsers and on E-mail alerts all over the country. The news is bloody, and unlike the Biblical swath of Lamb's Blood over the lintel and on the doorjambs, that blood may not be enough to save the new "netizens" of the New Economy from economic ruin.

For example -- in February Applied Materials was trading at $80 per share or better, and even a year ago it was at about $49 or so, but today it closed at $44.50 for a loss of over four dollars on the day. America On Line closed down, again, dragging Time Warner along with it, as Steve Case's baby lost 17% of its value and is back where it was in late February of 1999.

And in a development which does not augur well for the immediate future, meaning "broadband" and Digital Subscriber Lines, and so on, DSL industry leader Coppper Mountain got bloodied today, too.

CMTN closed at $26.87 for a loss on the day of 12.24%, and that placed its value at the starting point of its great run-up, which was June of 1999. In July of this year it spiked at over $120 per share, but what is most curious is that the most intense activity in this stock happened about twenty-one days ago, when somebody went into "dump mode." It has been languishing since.

Applied Materials represents that end of the computer business where toolmakers and chip-handlers live and work: it is sliding down and fast; America On Line is the Big Kahuna of Internet Service Providers, giving its users a whole universe of services to pick from and offering what is arguably the best E-mail format on the whole planet. And Copper Mountain, which is a much smaller operation than either of those two giants, represents the developing world of "the new New Economy." Digital Subscriber Lines and networks have been getting the "hype" for months, now, but customers and business users have not been seeing any real value for their money, yet, and in many areas DSL installations are way, way behind schedule.

Worse yet, for Copper Mountain and for the whole Internet-related sector, CMTN has been getting hammered in the after-hours market today. On the trading lists at Island, Copper Mountain has been abandoned by investors and has lost nearly half of its remaining value in the after-hours selling, dropping some fourteen points to about $12.25 or so. That isn't a sell off. That is a rout, that is pure panic, that is the Citizenry of the Cul-de-Sac saying "get us out, now, at any price!"

Dear Friends, the Internet has revolutionized communications. It has made this forum possible. Many of us are profoundly grateful for its invention and for the thousands of adaptations and soft machineries which make it work so well -- but the laws of physics haven't been repealed, the basic laws of economics haven't been repealed -- and the high-pressure boys who drummed up this great "dot-com Swindle" are laughing now, because they paid cash for all of their toys, and their second houses, quietly earning their windfall profits by collecting the commissions and their advisory fees, and not by loading up on the dot-com stocks, themselves.

Sure they bought in early and liquidated either early or near the top of the peak of many of these stocks. That has been the secret history of the great dot-com swindling of the Year 2000.

A broker told me, seven months ago, in no uncertain terms, that the Internet stock-buying mania was a sickness, a disease of the mind, and that a lot of people were going to get hurt. He said that the numbers he had seen were staggering, when it comes to ordinary working folks in middle-class environs buying stocks on margin -- that is, buying stocks with borrowed money. He said that the worst possible scenario was not a radical fall off in value, which happens from time to time in an exuberant market, but in a slow, steady decline from which there can be no recovery and no long-lasting rallies. Then the brokerages and the speculators will have to call these margins, and people who have purchased stocks with borrowed money will be selling their homes and their cars to meet their margin calls, or going bankrupt by the millions. Here in New England people are faced with rising costs of home heating oil, the highest gasoline prices (and taxes), in the nation, the highest property taxes, and State income taxes laid in on top of all of the other things we pay.

Until now, the creation of value in day trading or in having a few stocks in an after-hours trading operation, was both sensible and lucrative. The equity was increasing, there was no reason or need to sell, and therefore very few taxes to be paid. But one of the fundamental lessons of the 1920's was completely jettionsed by the Free Trade Liberals who have infiltrated both major parties in the last twelve years: never borrow money to buy stocks! and never allow insurance companies, brokerages, and banking houses to cross over into each other's territories.

Some of the biggest losers in the last week have been -- the brokerages and financial services groups -- the very people who are supposed to be making money in any kind of economic climate!

Is that the scenario we are now faced with, in October, 2000? Dozens of "dot-com" companies have disappeared in the last few weeks alone, including Clickmango, and several e-commerce houses selling toys. The cold winter that seems to be coming on fast, may be the coldest and most sorrowful season in nearly a hundred years (but I could be wrong), because there are no factories left to soak up the excess labor -- just fast-food joints and salons.

And if so, it really is no surprise to those of us with a more conspiratorial framework of thinking and analysis. The Slaughter of the Dot-Com Lambs is not a Hollywood sequel. It is a classic "bait and switch" SWINDLE. No wonder they don't want the Citizenry of the Cul-de-Sac to have any guns. The drummers have flushed the pigeons and the tasty quail from the tall grass, and the neo-royalists, the Bank of England sharpshooters, may now pick them off -- one by one or by the dozens -- at their leisure.