The questions in this group are based on the content of a passage. After reading the passage, choose the best answer to each question. Answer all questions following the passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
The collapse of the stock "bubble" of Internet-related companies in 2000-2001 has resulted in more than its fair share of analysis, hand-wringing, and finger-pointing. A panel discussion at a recent Technology Today conference in Santa Monica produced a heated debate between two former luminaries of the dot.corn world: investment banker Pat Verhofen and Sue Mickelson, founder and CEO of Internet retailer Frizbeez.com.
Verhofen fired the opening shot by placing blame for the collapse of Internet stocks on the shoulders of Internet entrepreneurs who aggressively promoted ideas without viable business models. These entrepreneurs were both irresponsible and deceptive, Verhofen argued, to take investors’ money to fund operations that could not reasonably turn a profit, such as giving computers away for free or selling bulky objects, such as dog food or furniture, over the Internet. Many of these companies, he suggested, were little more than arrangements of smoke and mirrors designed to separate investors from their money.
Mickelson responded that Verhofen was like a fox in a henhouse blaming the rooster for all the dead chickens. Entrepreneurs cannot be blamed, she argued, for trying to make money for themselves and other people, because that is what entrepreneurs do. She also stated that you cannot know what ideas will or will not work until you try them; contemporaries of the Wright brothers said that a heavier-than-air aircraft could never work, and look at the skies today.
Mickelson instead placed the blame on the unscrupulous bankers and fund managers who hyped Internet stocks in order to cash in on fees from IPOs and trades. In contrast to entrepreneurs, these financial types actually do have a responsibility to offer only sound financial advice to their clients. If anyone should bear the blame, she argued, it should be people like Pat Verhofen.
Indigo Smith, the moderator of the panel, responded that perhaps the true fault lay with the common investors, who should not have invested in technology stocks in the first place if they lacked the knowledge to do so properly. While she expressed sympathy for those elderly investors who lost substantial portions of their retirement savings on flimsy Internet stocks, she observed that no one forced them to invest in those stocks.
Which of the following statements presents the pest conclusion one could draw based on the information given in the passage ？（）
A. The collapse of the Internet stock "bubble" drove thousands of investors into bankruptcy.
B. People involved with the Internet do not all agree on which party bears the most responsibility for the collapse of the Internet stock "bubble."
C. Of all parties involved with the Internet, financial professionals such as investment bankers and fund managers derived the most profits from the stock "bubble."
D. The Internet stock "bubble" could not have occurred if entrepreneurs had been honest about the true financial prospects of their companies.
E. The average investor has no one to blame but himself or herself if he or she invested in an Internet stock without adequately understanding the true financial prospects of the companies in question.
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