It's beginning to look like it.
Looks like stoopid was running the economy at that time. dot.com fantasyland. Fantasy? Kind of like the liberals opinion that Klintoon was a great president.
A more accurate assessment would be that much of this "value" never really existed.
When someone invests $1,000 and within a year the stock goes to to $20,000 and then loses all its value, it is invariably reported as a loss of $20,000, as though $20,000 of value ever really existed. The actual "loss," of course is $1,000, plus a reasonable one year return on investment.
This is the type of loss many of the Enron employees suffered, and is is different only in degree from a Vegas gambler who starts with $500, is momentarily up to $50000 and then loses it all.
One company exchanges some overpriced paper (stock) for another company's over priced paper. The economy slows down, the market goes down and the value of the paper goes down. At this point everyone is about even since the market value of both companies would have gone down had they not merged.
The best part is that the acquiring company is now required to take a large non-cash tax deduction. Uncle Sam's IRS takes it in the ear.
Imagine. You do a non-cash paper swap and get a real cash break with reduced tax payments.
What a country!
Isn't Vivendi the parent company to the publisher(s) who gave Bill 'n Hill the multi-million dollar book deals? Also, I recall Vivendi being involved with the TV stations who used "moral message" situations in TV shows to side-step the Public Service Message requirement. (At some point during the Clinton era, it was mandated that all stations had to broadcast Public Service messages -- anti-drug, anti-smoking, etc. The stations involved claimed they did not have to run the Public Service Announcements because their dramas depicted situations delivering the same message -- a charcter says, "Dope is bad for you" qualified as the Public Service Announcement.)
Or maybe I've been reading too much FR before the coffee is ready . . .
Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter's opponent in the 1980 election, had nothing but contempt for the idea that Americans should reduce their consumption. He had nothing but disdain for the environmental movement. His optimism (he liked to proclaim it "morning in America," which he frequently described as a "shining city on a hill") made him a popular president among the masses.It became apparent in hindsight that what had seemed to be a mass frugality and environmental movement in the 1970s had been confined to middle- and upper-middle-class activists. By 1984, "big is better" bumper stickers began to displace those proclaiming "small is beautiful." Yuppies replaced hippies. U.S. News and World Report announced "the old less is more, down-with-materialism atmosphere...has been brushed aside. A flaunt-it-if-you-have-it style is rippling in concentric circles across the land." "Greed is good! Greed will save the U.S.A.!" proclaimed Gordon Gekko in the Academy Award- winning 1987 film, Wall Street. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, with host Robin Leach deliriously shouting about the "dreams money can buy," started, and became one of the most successful shows in the history of television.
"Reagonomics," the tax policies and "trickle down" theories of Reagan's economists, have been blamed for the massive redistribution of wealth that occurred in the U.S. in the 1980s. National columnist Richard Reeves wrote, "Nine out of ten people got screwed....The richest 10 percent of the nation got richer and paid fewer taxes. The middle class made less money and paid more taxes. The poor got poorer and there were more of them. The money was trickling up, not down." At the end of the Decade of Greed, as some have called it, 33 percent of all personal wealth in the nation was in the hands of 1 percent of its households.
History is still being made, and your guess about how this decade will be viewed by generations to come is as good as ours! Students and viewing party discussion groups, this is a good subject for an essay. Write your predictions for the rest of the 1990s. What name will our decade end up with?
IF the accounting firm handling the Enron debacle is getting hammered as it is?
Whadda ya suppose this administration's people are going to do to the Clintonistas responsible for the condition(s) conducive to the obscene feeding frenzy?
A feeding frenzy which up to just now, had been called, "The Greatest Economy this nation's ever witnessed" -- courtesy of The Greatest Criminal Enterprise the nation ever permitted to gain control?
Many of those people responsible for this boondoggle, btw, still remain employed in our goverment, at that!
Hell, I wonder if anyone will even frame the impending crash as it rightfully should.
What am I saying, anyway.
nawwwwwww...
Of course they won't even ask *The* question.
The Bush administration must know damned well what the gig is; and, that that gig is nearly up.
One can almost hear 'em all whistling past the graveyard, right now.
The United States is worried about frivolous law suits from developing countries against U.S. servicemen stationed around the world. The Bush administration has even asked the United Nations whether it could rescind Washington's signature from the treaty, signed by former U.S. President Bill Clinton at the end of his term.