Word: dumbness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...perfectly capable of making an informed decision on how to spend the money. The potential benefits of the windfall are not lost on us; we have a vested interest in seeing the money--our money--spent well. Council members, by assuming--and actually saying--that students are too dumb to weigh the proposals, only prove how disconnected they are with their constituents...
...been more explosive. EBay rose a quick 37%; Xerox, 10%; Microsoft, 12%. People now pay for services that alert them via pager or e-mail whenever a split is announced, so they can quickly buy the stock. It's an example of lemmings running amuck in the market--dumb money chasing any trend that doesn't require thoughtful analysis...
...Even dumb money does sometimes make money. It's possible to be wrong but lucky--especially in a bull market. But luck doesn't last; fads fade. Successful investing requires research and judgment--if only to judge that you're better off buying your stocks through mutual funds...
Where is all this dumb money? Much of it is in Internet stocks, most of which command stratospheric prices despite their lack of profits and their dubious prospects. In a seminal event for these stocks' valuations, high-flying portal company Lycos last week agreed to merge with USA Networks, a real company (Home Shopping Network; Ticketmaster) with $1.5 billion in annual revenue. Lycos shares plunged 31% in two days as investors reflected on Lycos' value inside a company that must--gasp--post rising profits to boost its share price...
...make the metaphorical point. Herbert's own oblique language is captured in the phrase "forgotten leafy speech," an image which charms with the power of forgotten myth, an alibi against any accusations po-mo linguistic pretension. By recalling sleep, dreams, unrecoverable history (see "About Troy") and the personalities of dumb material objects (see "Elegy for the Departure of Pen Ink and Lamp"), Herbert selects the very topics that demand linguistic self-consciousness, save that topic of genocide and terror which Adorno famously said would make "all lyricafter the holocaust...barbaric...