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The Nonprofit Motive
By ANDY BOROWITZ (editor's hint - wearing a sarcastic grin as you read this helps understand the nature of this "editorial") Having been burned in recent weeks by the dot-coms, Wall Street insiders are turning an increasingly bullish eye to a new, white-hot market sector: the dot-orgs. At first blush, Wall Street's mad rush to invest in nonprofit organizations seems counterintuitive, but market gurus believe that the dot-orgs provide something the dot-coms cannot: predictability. "The dot-com companies promise huge profits but wind up hemorrhaging cash," said Ivan Z., a senior dot-org analyst. "The nonprofit organizations promise no profits and consistently deliver on that promise." He added that, unlike the dot-coms, dot-orgs are not the subject of nagging questions about earnings. "If people ask when the dot-orgs will turn a profit, there's a simple answer: when pigs fly. Going forward, we expect the dot-orgs to rack up an impressive string of zeroes for some time to come." In a surprising chorus of unanimity, Main Street seems to be agreeing with Wall Street, as investors rush to gobble up the suddenly sexy dot-orgs. Buster H., a full-time day trader has dumped his shares of priceline.com and is loading up on stocks like audubon.org and sierraclub.org. "With dot-coms, I used to lose sleep worrying about bad earnings reports," he told a reporter at the Dot-Org Market Site in Times Square, where investors huddled to track the performance of today's hot I.P.O., savethewhales.org. "Dot-orgs may earn nothing, but when you've lost as much money as I have, nothing starts to look like something." While some naysayers warn of a coming dot-org bubble, Ivan Z. shrugs off this doom-and-gloom scenario. "I've put out a strong buy rating on both pbs.org and npr.org," he said. "These two are a sure bet never to turn a profit, plus, you get a mug." Andy Borowitz is the author of ``The Trillionaire Next Door: The Greedy Investor's Guide to Day Trading.'' (c)The NY Times (www.nytimes.com) May 2000 | |
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