The best place to invest?

Posted by Marc Hodak on September 19, 2007 under Revealed preference | Comments are off for this article

A couple days ago, Don Surber wrote a great piece on the return on investment in lobbying Congress.

You bought Google at $100 and 3 years later is nearing $600 a share? Big deal. Microsoft has gone up 28-fold over the last 20 years? Yawn. You want to make the big bucks? Rent a congressman. Your return on your investment can be as high as $75 for every dollar invested.

Well, being the smart guys they are, Google has caught on quickly.

Internet search company Google Inc. has registered in-house lobbyists for the first time since establishing a Washington office in 2005.

“We’ve expanded our presence because there are an increasing number of issues being debated in Washington that are of concern to our users,” said Adam Kovacevich, a spokesman for Google, which spent $580,000 in first six months of 2007 to lobby the federal government.

That’s $100,000 per month that will go to a lawyer instead of an engineer.

Is this a great country or what?