CAVEAT EMPTOR - Use of the Internet by investors has given new meaning to the old expression, "Let the buyer beware." First up, we have a bogus Web site designed to look like an Internet page of Bloomberg News, on which someone posted a fake story that an American company, PairGain Technologies, Inc., was being taken over by an Israeli rival for a hefty price. The story spread to a Yahoo message board and to other sites, resulting in investors bidding up PairGain's stock by more than 30%...until midday that is, when the truth came out and the stock retreated. Then we have "New Utopia," a tax-free Caribbean haven built on, get this, concrete platforms on an underwater land mass. Unfortunately, some Internet investors fell for it and sunk money into a phony $350 million bond offering. The SEC has since obtained a restraining order against Lazarus R. Long (or Prince Lazarus as he prefers to be called) and his New Utopia company.

RAPID GROWTH - Nationwide announced that it has just exceeded $100 billion in assets. The remarkable part is that the company had assets of "only" $50 billion in 1994. That's an impressive five-year achievement for the aggressive multi-line carrier.

DANGEROUS MARKET? - The secondary market that has developed to purchase the life insurance policies of healthy insureds is beginning to cause concern among regulators and insurers, according to the April issue of Best's Review. This business is largely unregulated, leaving both insureds and investors at risk. Insureds who sell their policies have no guarantees on who may ultimately own them, which, according to Joseph Belth, "is creating a powerful incentive for homicide." Investors in the pools of cash used to purchase the policies also have few, if any, protections.

ONLINE FILING - Travelers (http://www.travelers.com) now offers an online claim reporting service for homeowner and automobile policyholders...just click on the "File-a-Claim" icon. Concurrently, the law firm of Dewey, Cheatum and Howe posted a "File-a-Suit" icon on their site.

TECHNOLOGY DECISION - To further demonstrate the importance of IT (that's Information Technology for the unenlightened!) to the financial services industry, National Underwriter is set to launch a new publication, Technology Decisions. The new monthly publication is designed to be a guide for IT professionals and senior executives.

120,000 DOW IN 2025 - That's the prediction of Roger Ibbotson, a Yale University economist. Don't laugh...as reported in Investment News, Mr. Ibbotson correctly predicted in 1974 that the Dow would hit 10,000 in 1999.

THREAT? - Plaintiff attorneys, including Melvyn Weiss, whose firm "has recovered billions of dollars" for policyholders, is warning companies that insurance fraud in the recent demutualization activities could be the next legal battleground. Weiss sees mutual holding companies as a way for management to cash in on the financial attraction of public ownership. "I guess they see people like (CEO) Sandy Weill at Travelers and the kind of money (about $250 million for Sandy) they are making and get jealous."

IRRESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM - No, not us! Apparently the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine carried a critical article on the managed care programs of Principal Financial Group in Latin America. Major problem with the article was that Principal doesn't have a managed care operation in Latin America.

DO NO HARM - That's the message to politicians concerning health care in a recent Washington Post column by Dave Broder. The column highlights a magazine article, "Government Does, Indeed, Ration Health Care" by outspoken former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm. Some highlights: o health care has overtaken housing as the most expensive item in the family budget; o health care spending is growing faster than anything else in state and federal budgets; o health care represents one-seventh of the nation's economy...and yet, the U.S., with 43 million uninsureds, has by far the largest share of uninsured citizens of any advanced nation and, of 29 industrial countries, we rank 21st in infant mortality, 17th in life expectancy for woman and 21st for men. The point of both Mr. Broder's column and Gov. Lamm's article is that the question is not whether we should ration health care. With one-sixth of our population uninsured, rationing is already taking place. The question is how we should ration health care. Rather than making the problem worse by extending Medicare to include prescription drug benefits (which, by the way, would cost in the $30 billion range initially) or by guaranteeing through a "patient's bill of rights" every possible service that could provide even a marginal health benefit, we need to recognize that "all Americans - including the retired - should contribute to the costs of their health care as far as they are able and we must acknowledge that additional benefits for those with insurance are less vital than providing access to basic care" for all Americans. In case you don't know of him, Dave Broder is very far from a "screaming liberal," but is a reasonable person again pointing out that the entire health care issue remains a ticking bomb in our society.