I agree that the collapse was inevitable - would not have mattered if the
2000 election had given us Bush, Gore, or Bill Gates as president.
However, while I do cast some blame on the Enron-style "irregular"
accounting and reporting and the lack of regulation and enforcement that
allowed it to happen, that only accounts for a very small portion of the
bubble. A larger portion, in my view, was caused by an over exuberant
financial media singing in harmony with the "all knowing" market analysts
who whipped the public into believing that the New Economy was real, and
that:
A) There was no limit to how high stock prices could go
B) There was no limit to the number of profitable competitors a market could
sustain
C) Profitability was not important -- it was gaining market share that was
key
More jobs and GDP were lost due to the throngs of companies that folded
(many of which never should have been funded in the first place) than to
Enron, Worldcom, and the others who got tagged for false bookkeeping.
--
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"Fly-by-Night CC" wrote in message
news
In article ,
"todd" wrote:
Are you saying there was a lack of oversight of this sort of behavior
while
Clinton was in office? Are you suggesting that the Clinton
administration
purposely let this type of behavior go on to keep the economy up?
That's a
pretty cynical view.
Hadn't thought about Clinton at all in my comment - I am cynical tho in
my view of many corporate behaviors. I want to believe they are trying
to do right by the public, their employees and their stockholders but
they disappoint me time and again.
I think the collapse was inevitable as the shennanigans just couldn't
continue as the balloon started springing leaks and wasn't able to
support itself any longer. Also am not sure if these accounting
restatements and revelations would have been discovered by any outside
regulatory oversight - I think time just caught up with most of them.
--
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Offering a shim for the Porter-Cable 557 type 2 fence design.
http://www.flybynightcoppercompany.com
http://www.easystreet.com/~onlnlowe/index.html