There were boatloads of companies who were on the move growing as fast as they could and were almost unanimously of the belief that the party would keep on going back then and they too had M&A committees blah blah blah. I know. I was with one during that time and witnessed second-hand dozens of companies making moves, JVs, building huge new state-of-the-art facilities and almost all of them regret overextending.

The statement by Gloria was off the cuff at best and doesn't change fact that most potential customers of new technologies cut and run when things went south back then. Who knows what would have been if the credit markets didn't lock up. Does that warped rearview mirror that you guys use incessantly happen to have a feature that allows you to input a healthy economic base from which to launch all of the entities in which investments were made?

Come to think of it- As I recall you were were actually behind a couple of the ventures for a time - were you not?

Also- I believe you stated after the fact when it started to become apparent that these investments were not getting us anywhere that your retroactive way of managing that money would have been to put it in an interest bearing account indefinitely which would have - of course - had shareholders up in arms for not taking more risks and leveraging those monies. Not exactly a visionary strategy there either - chief

My perspective is to accept the fact that the acquisition strategy didn't work - for whatever reasons and move on. Yours is to bitch and moan endlessly in the hopes that the BOD will step down en masse and that you and Ron will be there to facilitate the phoenix's rise from the ashes.

Sounds a little on the Charley Mansonish side to me.

Oh well... To each his own.