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The 90's stock "bubble" was a combination of luck (y2K during that time led to 3 years of massive investment in software and hardware by corporations around the world - helping the technology rich Nasdaq soar)....and Clinton Classic Corruption.

Let's not forget to blame good old fashioned American stupidity while we're making an invetory. I remember a very apocryphal article in WSJ in February of 2000. It was about a company (some .com, wish I could remember their name) that had IPOd a year earlier at $.50/ share, after 1 year on the market they were trading at $18/ share. The punchline of this story is that the company still, 1 year after IPO, didn't have a business plan. Forget products and income and stuff, they didn't even have a business plan... but were trading at $18. I'd love to be able to lay crap like that at Billy's feet but that's just dumbness on our part (well, everybody that owned that stock anyway).

Remember Burton Malkiel writing in the WSJ? A lot of people saw this coming. I remember arguing with my father-in-law in the mid-90's that since the barriers to entry were so low, margins in IT would approach pennies on the dollar. He disagreed, put A LOT of money in a software training company, and lost it all. Went to work for a second one. Down they went.

These boom-bust cycles are systemic to our inflationary economy. As one commentator has said, we no longer practice capitalism; we practice debtism.

Taxes are still way too high and the government has embarked on a dangerous spending spree. With an aging population and depleted capital stock, our creditors are seriously beginning to be skeptical of our ability to pay our public and private debt. There is more to come.