If you had bought $1000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49. With Enron, you would have $16 of the original $1,000. With WorldCom, you would have less than $5 left. If you had bought $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the deposit, you would have $214. Clearly, the best investment is to drink heavily and recycle.