The winners in the race to bankruptcy court are the ones scarfing up all the assets.

Here's a good example. First Avenue Networks, known as Advanced Radio Telecom Corp. before its April 2001 bankruptcy filing, is buying Teligent, which filed a month later, for stock it says is now worth $105 million.

First Avenue doesn't care about Teligent's "story," a "wireless cable" network aimed at linking businesses to fiber backbones dirty-cheap. Instead it wants Teligent's spectrum licenses. The new company is in the business of arbitraging spectrum, picking up rights cheap and leasing them to cellular companies for backhaul.

Remember, folks. Stories aren't worth much at the end of the day. Show me the assets. And if everyone is going belly-up, it pays to go broke first.

I think Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest would call that "git thar fust with the least." And, he might add, "keep up bein' skeered."