THE FUNNY MONEY GAME: The Inside Story of a Memorable Business Debacle

Mr. Tobias, the ex-youth marketeer who was last seen trapped inside a plastic bubble on the cover of New York magazine, good naturedly explains how he became a vice president of National Student Marketing Corporation (NSMC) at the age of 21; how NSMC increased its market worth to $100 million by adroitly playing the synergetic ""funny money"" game (i.e., high-multiple stock used to acquire additional companies which in turn produces high investor confidence which in turn creates more paper worth to buy more companies which in turn. . . anyway, NSMC's ""name was synonymous with success, prosperity, and a brilliant future""); how the NSMC bamboozle burst like the overripe conglomerate it really was, leaving young Master Tobias high and a little more dry behind the options and (""Who needed business school?,"" he once said) now a student at Harvard's B-School happily trying to recoup his shaken entrepreneurial poise. It's a delightful calamity which should scare hell out of both the bulls and the bears to say nothing of the chickens who came home to roost.