or glory by buying Tele- The Great Telecom Meltdown Communications Inc., turning overnight into the biggest cable company. And of course it paid far too much-Armstrong was no master of valuation. But it could have continued with its strategy of using the cable plant for triple play, making itself relevant again as well as a worthy competitor to the RBOCs. But instead, it underwent a reorganization that led to the spin-off of both its cable and wireless units, leaving old Mother Bell just a ghost of its glorious former self. Armstrong himself was gone, replaced by David Dornan, who had not come up through the ranks of management; he would have to find relevance for the smaller company or be forced to find an end game. Global Double Crossing Global Crossing was another boom-era company whose business was in a natu- ral meltdown, as its heavy investments in undersea cable were not paying off. Like Enron, it retained Arthur Andersen as its audit firm. Like Enron, it ended up in bankruptcy, after its founder, Gary Winnick, had made $700 million for himself by selling company stock into the bull market. (Hence this raised a familiar question-what did he know and when did he know it?) The company was also lavish with politicians, including former presidents Bill Clinton (a gift to his presidential library) and George H.W. Bush (stock in lieu of a speaking fee) [2]. The company's fall had many causes, but it apparently used question- able accounting of its wholesale sales to other telecommunications companies. It made "even trades" of IRUs with other carriers, booking the sales as revenue. This provided its trading partners with their own opportunity to book the trades as sales. It talked about IRU sales as providing "cash revenue," an impressive- sounding term not found in standard accounting practices but which exagger- ated apparent earnings [3]. It apparently swapped $150 million on paper with 360Networks, with no cash actually changing hands [4]. And indeed others did the same thing. Qwest had to restate several yea