Free Republic

By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it. Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States. Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for...

NEW YORK - The stock market's big 2006 advance gave a boost to more than investment portfolios - it fueled a frenzied pace of mergers and acquisitions, with hedge funds and private equity shops sending the total value of acquisitions to a staggering $4 trillion. This set a record for M&A, besting the dot-com boom in 2000, when the value of deals totaled $3.3 trillion, according to M&A tracking firm Dealogic. It gave Wall Street bankers a lot to smile about, especially given the astronomical bonuses doled out this year. But, the little guy wasn't exactly left out either. All...

NEW YORK -- Last week marked five years since the stock market bubble finally began to burst. The Nasdaq hit its all-time high on March 10, 2000, and then began a steady plunge that marked the birth of a long bear market. The long bull market that preceded it was a remarkable time, but also a costly one. On the plus side, we got a technology whose transformational effects can't be overstated. On the down side, the dawn of the Internet also spawned the dot-com craze, one of the loopier periods in American business history and proof positive that so...

While reporters usually pretend that Bill and Hillary Clinton's legal problems are behind them, Mrs. Clinton seems to know better. That is, at least judging by the way she's handling the latest lawsuit filed against her. Sen. Clinton's office spent a significant part of this week dodging media questions about Stan Lee Media co-founder Peter Paul, who claimed in court documents filed in Los Angeles last week that she and her husband accepted $2 million from him and reported only a tiny fraction to the Federal Election Commission. "Clinton's Senate staff did not respond to the Associated Press' repeated...

The Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Struggling online magazine publisher Salon Media Group said its chief executive officer, Michael O'Donnell, is leaving the company after seven years. The San Francisco-based company, which has been battling to survive, gave no reason for O'Donnell's departure in an announcement Thursday. A call to O'Donnell for comment was not immediately returned. O'Donnell will be replaced as CEO by Salon founder David Talbot, who is the company's chairman and editor-in-chief. Elizabeth Hambrecht, Salon's chief financial officer, will inherit O'Donnell's title as president. A former software sales executive, O'Donnell joined Salon as president and publisher...

In the heady days of the late 20th century, the best way to get ahead was to slap a dot-com after your name. Internet start-ups were all the rage, and with the stock market surging, they seemed headed for a brilliant future. For example, Boo.com raised almost $120 million of venture capital in 1999. Pets.com went public in February 2000, and pocketed $76 million on its first day of trading. But when the high-tech bubble burst, investors quickly learned which companies enjoyed real value and which were empty shells. By September 2000 Boo.com, Pets.com and dozens of other Internet companies were...

How to address the recent spate of purple prose regarding the pros and cons of sorting out the Cons? You know the ones I mean; the neocons, the paleocons, even theocons and I suppose, some excons. For those of you outside the virtual Beltway, the 'cons' referred to above would be those who espouse conservativism, and the latest rage among liberals (and some cons themselves) is to pigeonhole its proponents. Yes Virginia, as strange as it may seem, there is Diversity amongst the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. And this seems to both surprise and elate its enemies.

RNC RESEARCH BILL CLINTON TO EXPLAIN HIS RECESSION ON CBS’ “60 MINUTES” Months Before Final 60 Minutes Ran Out On Clinton Administration, The Economic Recession Had Already Begun _______________________________________________________ “President Bush’s main economic policy -- the large tax cut of last year was not responsible for any of the current damage [to the economy]. Indeed, given the twin shocks of 9/11 and the post-Enron stock market decline, the short-term stimulus created by the tax cuts has turned out to be fortuitously well timed.” (Editorial, “Negative Al Gore,” The Washington Post, October 5, 2002) ECONOMIC DATA CONFIRMS SLOWDOWN BEGAN UNDER CLINTON...

<p>Here's a sampling from this week's e-mail bag: A gentleman named David Owens jauntily greets us with, "Hey d---ks----rs! I just read you can't pay your rent. Where are all your liberal buddies now? Oh well." A Hugh Curd rejoices that "thank mohammad, your truly worthless rag is going to fail ... maybe you can get some fresh capital from your bug-chasing friends in san francisco or your terrorist buddies in north africa. you failed! move to france and smoke cowardly dong." Stan Willock offers these words of consolation to Salon readers: "[They] will still have PBS, where hundreds are misinformed and entertained at taxpayer expense, as well as CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC. All are losing viewers to the fair and balanced Fox News Channel and to conservative talk radio. Best of luck looking for a new job. Hopefully you qualify as a member of a preferred group (person of color, female, gay, lesbian, etc)." And these are the more genial letters! I'll spare you the ones spelling out the lurid physical punishments their writers would like to inflict on me personally, which would make even Saddam blush.</p>

The dramatic collapse in the value of internet companies was highlighted once more by Overture's $140m acquisition of Alta Vista, one of the pioneers of web search and once one of the world's most coveted online companies. Alta Vista's struggling parent CMGI, the Massachusetts-based technology group, has sold one of its crown jewels for just a fraction of the $2.3bn it paid to Compaq in 1999, when it took an 83 per cent stake in Alta Vista. Overture, which calls itself "the world's leader in Pay-For-Performance search", allows advertisers to bid for well-placed spots among web search results on sites...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When the Internet bubble swelled in the late 1990s, $100-a-bottle of wine flowed like Evian water and entrepreneurs whet their appetites on $70 plates of caviar before diving into five-course, expense account meals. Now the bubble is bursting for the restaurants that catered to the hard-working, free-spending dot-com crowd. Many restaurants around this city, long dependent on tourist traffic, are feeling the pinch of the recession. But the loss of diners is especially severe at some of the trendiest places, which had set up virtual assembly lines serving foie gras, truffles, expensive wines and a lot...