Doling out friendsandfamily stock to customers has become commonplace. 63) CEOs and founders sell stocks early, making sure they get their cut of the wealth—no matter what signal that sends to their publicmarket investors. Startups rely on small boards packed with insiders. Stock and research analysts play a key role too, as cheerleaders pumping the Internet revolution.
Taken together, these practices suggest an industry awash in ...what? Greed, certainly. 64) But something else too: an inverted dynamic, born of a stock market gone mad, in which entrepreneurs have begun to regard the capital market not as a disciplining force but as the customer. Companies are created, hyped and sold with less concern for attracting real customers than for lining one’s pockets with investor’s money. 65) The result is that participants can wear a set of ethical blinders, behaving in ways that might seem perfectly acceptable within this insular(封闭的)context but that, when viewed with slight objectivity, look borderline at best. One can already imagine the postmortem articles that will follow any Internet crash. Silicon Valley. con, they’ll call it.
“The bull market has attracted a huge number of people for whom money is the only motivating factor,”says Roger McNamee of Integral Capital Partners, a Menlo Park investment firm. He’s not alone in voicing such concerns.“We’re getting to the stageswheresthe frauds are going to come in,”warns Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems cofounder and chief scientist.“There will be handwringing afterwards. We’ve seen this movie before.”Only this time the sums at stake are much,much larger, making the end of the’80s look like kindergarten. Move over, Bonfire of the Vanities.
Section IV Writing
66. Directions:
1.诚实为本
2.举例说明
参考答案与解析