The Bre-X Fraud

An excellent cautionary tale about sleaze, error, and blind faith. The Bre-X fiasco was perpetrated on people who should have known better, but it also hurt a lot of ordinary Joes. Ironically, Calgary, Toronto and on Wall St are the real villans here, not Indonesia. Even the Suharto family, famed for its corruption, can't keep up with the greed of Western mining promoters, elite underwriters, and savvy investors. Many people were ruined when Bre-X shot up 10,000 percent, and then tanked in a couple of hours. No one ever seems to learn, not after Keating, BCCI, Drexel Burnham, and Maxwell. Only those of us too poor to be in the stock market ever seem to see this coming. We can only ask ourselves "who's next?" in macabre anticipation.