1998 Ad

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Dec, 1998 by Kristin Davis, Robert Frick

* The unnamed dog owner who is spending $2.3 million to clone his gentle mixed-breed pet, Missy. "Just when you're convinced that the client [the millionaire] is a kook, you meet Missy and realize that this is an incredible dog," says Lou Hawthorne, manager of the research funds for "Project Missyplicity," which is under way at Texas A&M University, in College Station. Missy's owner is willing to extend the two-year grant.

The Monicomy Is Booming

MONICA MIGHT have been bad news for Bill Clinton, but she was great for business, especially in Washington, D.C. Law firms and steak restaurants prospered, of course, as well as paper companies and bicycle messengers. But lots of others got a piece of the action, too.

Freelance camera crews were booked solid staking out "Monica Beach" (in front of the Federal Courthouse), her lawyers' offices, her apartment at the Watergate, Linda Tripp's home, etc. Ditto for the freelance makeup artists who prepped pundits for TV.

Hundreds of Web sites capitalized on the scandal, hawking T-shirts and watches--not to mention more "adult" fare. Some sites even attracted paid advertising. Among the advertisers on the Monica Lewinsky Link Page are an online casino, debt consolidators and a cigar store.

Even entrepreneurial street vendors in Russia are making a few bucks off the scandal. In Moscow's Arbat pedestrian mall, tourists can buy nesting matrioshka dolls in President Clinton's image. Inside is a smaller doll with Monica Lewinsky's likeness, along with several other even smaller "dollies," including one that looks like Gennifer Flowers.

On the downside: NetPartners Internet Solutions, a San Diego software company, estimates that companies lost $470 million in worker productivity as employees used their computers at work to download the Starr Report and a transcript of the President's videotaped grand-jury testimony.

A Lawsuit We Could Have Lived Without

You've probably heard of class-action lawsuits in which the lawyers got millions and members of the class got pennies. But this one takes the gold medal.

During the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, spectators who bought packages of tickets to certain events, such as all the preliminaries and finals of a single sport, paid more for the package than the same tickets would have cost if purchased individually, Atlanta resident David Chernin, the named plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG), paid $2,778 for a set of tickets to Olympic basketball--$926 more than the Face value of the tickets. Others paid a far smaller premium (or "uplift," as the lawsuit so gently put it)--for instance, an extra $12 on a $490 series of soccer tickets.

Prices of individual and package tickets were fully disclosed in advance, but ACOG nonetheless came up with $1.65 million to settle the suit, filed by the law firm of Malakoff Doyle & Finberg in Pittsburgh. Lawyers' fees and expenses consumed about $580,000 of the settlement. The remainder went to about one-third of the members of the class, who were reimbursed for 70% of the "uplift" on their tickets.