"I still think the boom of the 90's was at least 50% cooked books in certain companies that seemed to give large amounts of money to the DNC and somehow never got investigated. Funny, that."
Oh, it was real enough, but the wrong people get the credit (and the discredit too). The Republican Congress forced Bill Clinton kicking and screaming to balance the budget. The Republican Congress passed real welfare reform over several Clinton vetoes. The engine of growth which is Silicon Valley performed real miracles. No doubt about it.
On the other hand, the bust was inevitable, and here's why. Greenspan -- confusing prosperity with inflation -- started hiking interest rates in the late 1990s. This should have immediately killed off the tech boom (and any other debt-sensitive area of the economy), but didn't, because Greenspan was also afraid of Y2K and hence printed an astonishing amount of money in 1998 and 1999 (a simple chart of the NASDAQ will tell you where that money went). Then, despite virtually every sensible person's advice and his own word he wouldn't do it, he sucked all that money back out of the economy in 2000 after Y2K didn't materialize, and did so largely by tightening money even further. Hence, all the highly-leveraged sectors of the economy tanked. Duh.
This is nothing Steve Forbes and I hadn't been saying would happen for years. George Gilder too, although he let himself get a little carried away in 1999 and 2000.
what do you see for mortgage rates? They seem to have surprised everyone, staying this low? I thought I had missed the peak time for re-fi, but apparently not...
I will make the request for your book at Borders. I know I will have to order it, as they don't seem to have room for anything on their tables except anti-Bush books and Clinton biographies.