1 “Queen of the ’Net,” Barron’s, 21 December 1998.
2 “It doesn’t matter what these companies do . . .” Saul Hansell, “Priceline.com Stock Zooms in Offering,” The New York Times, 31 April 1998: C1.
3 Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (London: Richard Bentley, 1841).
4 “Speculation . . . the act of knowingly assuming above-average risks,” The Concise McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Modern Economics, 1983 ed.
5 “Speculation tends to detach itself . . .” Charles Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (New York: John Wiley, 1996), 14.
6 Priceline.com Prospectus, 18 March 1999: 1–21.
1 “The investigator is staggered by the findings . . .” Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1945. <http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm.>
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 “Most people are stupid . . .” John Naughton, A Brief History of the Future (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), 221.
6 “Lay down thy packet . . .” Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), 195.
7 “Suppose all the information stored . . .” Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 4.
8 Ibid., 36.
9 Ibid., 73.
10 Karen D. Frazer, The NSFNET Backbone Project, 1987–1995 <http://www.merit.edu/merit/archive/nsfnet/final.report/phenom.html>.
1 Janos Kornai, “What the Change of System from Socialism to Capitalism Does and Does Not Mean,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14 (2000): 27–42.
2 “the final form of human government,” Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History,” National Interest, Summer 1989: 3–18.
3 “Computing is not about computers anymore. . . .” Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Vintage, 1996), 7.
4 “My approach was that if the code doesn’t say, ‘Thou shalt not’ . . .” Pamela Yip, Dallas Morning News, 9 January 2001.
5 “It is not a case of choosing those . . .” John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1964), 156.
6 “Investors learned firsthand in the 1980s . . .” Jane Bryant Quinn, “Time to Time the Market?” Newsweek, 6 September 1993: 56.
7 “Stocks have been chronically undervalued . . .” Jeremy Siegel, Stocks for the Long Run (New York: McGraw Hill, 1994), xvii.
8 Ibid., 30.
9 “Plot the two, and it looks like the same chart . . .” Jeffrey M. Laderman, “Call It a Boomer Boom,” Business Week, 27 March 2000: 209.
1 “During my service in the United States Congress . . .” Jules Siegel <http://www.redrat.net/gorebush/gore net.htm>.
2 “Just as the Interstate highway system . . .” Al Gore, “We Need a National ‘Superhighway’ for Computer Information,” The Washington Post, 15 July 1990: B3.
3 “The information superhighway is a convenient metaphor . . .” Tosca Moon Lee, “The Information Interstate: Superhighway or Superhype?” Smart Computing 5.9 (1994) <http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2F1994%2Fpcn0925%2Fpcn0925%2Easp>.
4 “We are seeing a revitalization of society . . .” Michael Hauben, <http://www.eff.org/pub/Net_culture/netizen.paper>.
5 Ibid.
6 William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace Books, 1994).
7 Donna Haraway, Cyborgs, Simians and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991).
8 “It just seemed to me to be the most important thing . . .” Tom Bethell, “The Prophet of Profits: George Glider Extends His Seamless Web,” The American Spectator, August 1999.
9 “The microchip will reshape not only the television and computer industries . . .” George Gilder, Life After Television: The Coming Transformation of Media and American Life (New York: Norton, 1992), 15–16.
10 Ibid., 53.
11 Ibid., 40.
12 “creating social changes so profound that their only parallel . . .” Louis Rossetto, Wired, January 1993.
13 “within ten or twenty years the world will be completely transformed . . .” Paul Keegan, “The Digerati,” The New York Times Magazine, 21 May 1997: 38.
14 “It’s very hard to think outside the boxes . . .” Peter Schwartz, “Shock Wave (Anti) Warrior,” Wired, November 1993.
15 Mitchell Kapor, “Where Is the Digital Highway Really Heading?” Wired, July/August 1993.
16 “When I met with the Japanese Prime Minister . . .” The Boston Globe, 1 March 1995.
17 “The idea that twenty years from now . . .” Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Vintage, 1996), 148.
18 Ibid., 179.
19 Ibid., 212.
20 “A Conversation with Vice President Gore about the ‘Information Superhighway,’ ” The National Journal 25 (1993): 676.
21 “Our new electronic superhighway will change the way people use television. . . .” Michael Wolff, Burn Rate (New York: Touchstone, 1999), 117.
22 John Cassidy, “Bell Rings Multi-Media Revolution,” Sunday Times of London, 17 October 1993.
1 “By the power vested in me by nobody in particular . . .” John Naughton, A Brief History of the Future (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), 245.
2 “Say we were talking about God or something . . .” Rick Tetzeli, “What It’s Really Like to be Marc Andreessen,” Fortune, 9 December 1996: 50.
3 “There was a definite element of not wanting to make it easier . . .” Naughton, 243.
4 “It had a very large established budget . . .” Ibid., 242.
5 “Face it, they made pages look cool,” Ibid., 247.
6 “I was right. People abused it horribly . . .” Ibid., 246.
7 “ ‘Tim bawled me out’ . . . Andreessen later recalled . . .” Robert H. Reid, Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business (New York: John Wiley, 1997), 12.
8 “There’s no infrastructure at all in Illinois . . .” Ibid., 21.
9 “so different and so obviously useful . . .” Ibid., 17.
10 “Marc. You may not know me . . .” Jim Clark, Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 34.
11 “Along with its brother, impatience . . .” Michael Lewis, The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (New York: Norton, 1999), 36.
12 “This is an information superhighway . . .” Reid, 19.
13 “I’m finished with all that Mosaic shit,” Clark, 42.
14 “Well, we could always build a Mosaic killer.” Ibid., 49.
15 “How could anyone make money on the Internet? . . .” Ibid., 45.
16 “If you can hire the entire Mosaic team to do this . . .” Ibid., 49.
17 “We had this twenty-two-year-old kid who was pretty damn interesting . . .” Reid, 24.
18 “When you ask people for millions of dollars . . .” Clark, 74.
19 “When I started Convergent, I got commitments for $2.5 million in twenty minutes . . .” Annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996), 65.
20 Saxenian, 39.
21 “a highly caffeinated Clark Kent,” John Heilemann, “The Networker,” The New Yorker, 11 August 1997: 29.
22 “This is so big, the only thing to do is dive right in,” Ibid.
23 “the nearest thing to a working prototype of the information superhighway . . .” Philip Elmer-Dewitt, “Battle for the Soul of the Internet,” Time, 25 July 1994: 50.
24 “info-suck” and “info-nipple,” Reid, 29.
25 “It’s basically a Microsoft lesson, right? . . .” Ibid., 31.
26 “It blew us all away,” Clark, 160.
27 “I’m astonished. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Peter H. Lewis, “Netscape Knows Fame and Aspires to Fortune,” The New York Times, 1 March 1995: D1.
1 Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation (New York: Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 1999), 3–6.
2 “full of instability, insanity, pride and foolishness . . .” Ibid., 13.
3 “for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage . . .” Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (London: Richard Bentley, 1841), 55.
4 “The universal deluge of the S. Sea . . .” Chancellor, 84–85.
5 “Dread seemed to take possession of the multitude . . .” Robert Sobel, Panic on Wall Street: A History of American Financial Disasters (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 179.
6 “October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months . . .” Burton G. Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 28.
7 “a new era without depressions,” Chancellor, 193.
8 Gene Epstein, “Can Anything Stop This Economy?” Barron’s, 4 September 2000.
9 Malkiel, 50.
10 “dividend discount model,” John Burr Williams, The Theory of Investment Value (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1938).
11 Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd, Security Analysis (New York: McGraw Hill, 1988).
1 “We had a belief that goods will be sold electronically . . .” Kara Swisher, aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web (New York: Three Rivers, 1999), 89.
2 “It’s like the land rush in Oklahoma . . .” Amy Cortese, “Cyberspace,” Business Week, 27 February 1995: 78.
3 “This is a rocket that has been launched . . .” John W. Verity, “Planet Internet,” Business Week, 3 April 1995: 118.
4 “Anything that even sounds like it’s an Internet play . . .” Karen Southwick, “Smitten with the Internet,” Upside, June 1995: 16.
5 “I continued to preach the gospel, assuring the unsaved . . .” Jim Clark, Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 205.
6 “With this company, and in this market . . .” Joshua Quittner and Michelle Slatalla, Speeding the Net: The Inside Story of Netscape and How It Challenged Microsoft (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998), 239.
7 “If Spyglass could score a successful IPO . . .” Clark, 212.
8 “It’s just like church . . .” Ibid., 218.
9 “The weather at seven a.m . . .” Ibid., 3.
10 “Press one if you’re calling about Netscape,” Quittner and Slatalla, 248.
11 Clark, 13.
12 “It was the best opening day for a stock in Wall Street history . . .” Ibid., 221.
13 “People started drinking my Kool-Aid,” Michael Lewis, The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (New York: Norton, 1999), 88.
14 “Today another frontier yawns before us . . .” John Perry Barlow, “Jack In, Young Pioneer!” Computerworld College Edition, 1994.
15 Ibid.
16 “like other Microsoft programs, may smother all competitors,” Joshua Quittner, “Browser Madness,” Time, 21 August 1995: 56.
17 “displace both the telephone and the television over the next five years . . .” George Gilder, “The Coming Software Shift,” Forbes, 28 August 1995.
18 “George, George, George—what took you so long?” Howard Anderson, “George Gilder and His Critics,” Forbes ASAP, 9 October 1995.
1 “pure marketing hype,” Randall E. Stross, “How Yahoo! Won the Search Wars,” Fortune, 2 March 1998: 148.
2 “every mother’s idea of the bedroom that she wished her sons never had,” Andrew Gumbel, “Analysis: The Cyberpunks,” The Independent (London), 24 March 1999.
3 “If you’ve got thirteen Madonna sites . . .” Stross, Fortune.
4 “The office was in the right-hand corner of a little industrial building . . .” Tim Koogle, interview with the author, 7 February 2000.
5 “charging too much money and getting too little done,” Ibid.
6 “We really wanted to keep the service free—that was a fundamental goal,” Jerry Yang, interview with the author, 7 February 2000.
7 “In spite of no real marketing spending and no infrastructure . . .” Koogle, interview.
8 “If you looked at Microsoft and believed Bill Gates . . .” John Cassidy, “The Woman in the Bubble,” The New Yorker, 26 April 1999: 54.
9 “a new way of financing companies,” Cassidy, Ibid., 56.
10 big market opportunity for lots of companies,” Mary Meeker and Chris DePuy, The Internet Report (New York: HarperBusiness, 1996), 1–2.
11 Ibid., 1.
12 Ibid., back cover.
13 “the number of pure-play investment vehicles related to the Internet . . .” Ibid., 1–3.
14 “Investors should hold off in the near term . . .” Ibid., 1–1.
15 “For now, it’s important for companies to nab customers . . .” Ibid., 1–20.
16 “I remember that in 1995 I would speak with Marc Andreesen . . .” Cassidy, New Yorker, 56.
17 “Morgan Stanley’s great insight . . .” Roger McNamee, interview with the author, March 1999.
18 “The lack of any sales was a major negative in our rating,” Joseph Radigan, “CyberCash’s Investors Get a Wild Ride,” U.S. Banker, April 1996.
19 “I really wanted a few more quarters,” Joseph Nocera, “Do You Believe? How Yahoo! Became a Blue-Chip Stock,” Fortune, 7 June 1999: 79.
20 “We couldn’t afford to be boxed in,” Ibid., 80.
21 “I was, like, Yahoo!, you know, just a search engine . . .” Mary Meeker, interview with the author, March 1999.
22 “The valuations are into the sphere of surrealism,” Jon Auerbach, “Yahoo, Indeed,” Boston Globe, 13 April 1996, City Edition.
23 “a new kind of global, diversified media company . . .” Jerry Useem, “All Dressed Up and No IPO,” Inc., February 1998: 98.
24 “a piece of junque du jour,” Ibid.
25 “Mistake. Big mistake. I knew it . . .” Michael Wolff, Burn Rate (New York: Touchstone, 1999), 101.
26 “The honeymoon is over,” Kora McNaughton, “Fixing the Pipes,” Upside, October 1996.
27 Ibid.
1 “something far less expensive than a PC which is powerful enough for Web browsing,” Charles H. Ferguson, High Stakes, No Prisoners (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999), 144–45.
2 “poorly debugged set of device drivers,” Ibid., 150.
3 “hard core about the Internet,” Ibid., 244.
4 James Collins, “High Stakes Winners,” Time, 19 February 1996: cover.
5 “I could never have imagined myself standing there with Gates . . .” Kara Swisher, aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web (New York: Three Rivers, 1999), 140.
6 “we must leverage Windows more . . .” Joshua Quittner and Michelle Slatalla, Speeding the Net: The Inside Story of Netscape and How It Challenged Microsoft (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998), 283.
7 “It is Case’s America Online that has shown . . .” Amy Cortese and Amy Barrett, “The Online World of Steve Case,” Business Week, 15 April 1996.
8 “I never knew anybody who took AOL seriously as an Internet company,” Michael Wolff, Burn Rate (New York: Touchstone, 1999), 203.
9 “the closest thing to marketing,” Cortese and Barrett, Business Week.
10 “make it easy and make it fun,” Swisher, 98.
11 Ibid., 226.
12 Ibid.
13 “nobody does a better job of making general information available for a mass market than America Online,” Mary Meeker and Chris DePuy, The Internet Report (New York: HarperBusiness, 1996), 1–18.
14 “The Emperor hath no Pants, AOL hath no Profits,” Swisher, 201.
15 Rupert Murdoch, interview with the author, 16 February 2001.
16 “black hole,” Wolff, 135.
17 “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,” Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1998), 6.
18 “We’ll be doing our best to get advertising income . . .” NBC, transcript of press conference, 14 December 1995.
19 “This is a big deal for GE . . .” Ibid.
1 Robert McGough, “Stock Funds’ Intake: $99 Billion in 4 Months,” The Wall Street Journal, 29 May 1996.
2 “You’ve got stocks selling at absolutely unbelievable multiples of earnings and revenues . . .” Barton Biggs, interview with the author, June 1996.
3 “The sociological signs are very bad, too . . .” Ibid.
4 “Believe me, the investment bankers would love me to be wildly bullish . . .” Byron Wien, interview with the author, June 1996.
5 “The powerful 1995 rally in stock prices is not a bubble but rather a signal that the valuation paradigm has changed,” David Shulman, “1996: Stock Market Bubble or Paradigm Shift?” Salomon Brothers circular, December 1995.
6 “The tape has a way of telling you . . .” David Shulman, interview with the author, June 1996.
7 “the wonderful things going on in the U.S. economy,” Abby Joseph Cohen, interview with the author, June 1996.
8 “I believe that the government’s productivity figures are wrong . . .” Ibid.
9 “so dramatic that one cannot expect them to be quickly incorporated by investors,” Ibid.
10 “The people who say the stock market is up x percent and therefore is overpriced are not looking at the right thing . . .” Ibid.
11 Neither Mr. Buffett nor Munger “would currently buy shares . . .” Bloomberg, “Buffett says offering is overpriced,” Financial Post, 3 April 1996: 6.
12 “euphoria,” Edward Wyatt, “Manager of Biggest Mutual Fund Quits After Recent Subpar Gains,” The New York Times, 24 May 1996: A1.
13 “It sent a message that you had better be right or else your job is on the line . . .” Barton Biggs, interview with the author, June 1996.
14 “When the rest of the world is mad, we must imitate them in some measure,” John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble (London: Cresset Press, 1960), 161.
15 “A fad is a bubble if the contagion of the fad occurs through price . . .” Robert J. Schiller, Market Volatility (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 56.
16 “We’re all looking at the performance of Internet companies that have come out since Netscape . . .” Peter H. Lewis, “Yet Again, Wall Street is charmed by the Internet,” The New York Times, 3 April 1996.
17 “Is there a reason for concern here that some of us don’t know about?” Lisa Bransten, “Lost in Cyberspace with a Motley Fool,” Financial Times, 22 June 1996.
18 “disquieting similarities between our present prosperity and the fabulous twenties,” Justin Martin, Greenspan: The Man Behind Money (Cambridge: Perseus, 2000), 216.
19 “I think investors can accommodate themselves to a 7 percent gain rather than a 30 percent gain . . .” Arthur Levitt, interview with the author, June 1996.
20 “I think we partially broke the back of an emerging speculation in equities,” Bob Woodward, Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 122.
21 Ibid., 173.
22 Ibid., 174.
23 “Clearly, sustained low inflation implies . . .” Bloomberg, “Excerpt From the Speech by Greenspan,” The New York Times, 7 December 1996: A37.
24 “I wonder if I had anything to do with that,” Bob Shiller, interview with the author, 21 February 2000.
25 “The Fed has no intention of tightening monetary policy simply to push the equity market down,” Floyd Norris,”Greenspan Asks a Question and Global Markets Wobble,” The New York Times, 7 December 1996: A1.
26 “Instead of raising rates, he is going to make speeches,” Ibid.
1 “In the three years since the Internet has taken off, the slow growth of electronic commerce has been one of its big disappointments . . .” Economist survey, “In Search of the Perfect Market,” The Economist, 10 May 1997.
2 Chip Bayers, “The Inner Bezos,” Wired, March 1999.
3 “You have to keep in mind that human beings aren’t good at understanding exponential growth . . .” Robert Spector, Amazon.com: Get Big Fast (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), 25.
4 “no eight-hundred-pound gorillas in book publishing and distribution,” Michael H. Martin, “The Next Big Thing: A Bookstore?” Fortune, 9 December 1996.
5 “I knew that when I was eighty . . .” Spector, 30.
6 “Though it hasn’t yet posted a profit, the company is on its way to ringing up more than $5 million . . .” G. Bruce Knecht, “How Wall Street Whiz Found a Niche Selling Books on the Internet,” The Wall Street Journal, 16 May 1996: A1.
7 “If we’d thought all this was purely about money . . .” John Heilemann, “The Networker,” The New Yorker, 11 August 1997: 34.
8 “Amazon.com is truly virtual,” Martin, Fortune, 9 December 1996.
9 “three floors above an art gallery on a slightly seedy street in Seattle . . .” Economist survey, “A River Runs Through It,” The Economist, 10 May 1997.
10 Jonathan Chait and Stephen Glass, “Amazon.con,” Slate, 4 January 1997.
11 “enormous benefit to the [publishing] business because it’s not about selling big, best-selling authors . . .” Spector, 174.
12 “We have to be a player. Online bookselling is going to be a very big thing,” Ibid., 124.
13 “virtually unlimited online shelf space . . .” Amazon.com Prospectus, March 1997: 3.
14 “believes that it will incur substantial operating losses for the foreseeable future . . .” Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 “If we’re profitable within the next two years, it will be an accident,” Fortune, 9 December 1996.
17 “stocks only a few hundred titles,” Spector, 168.
18 “caused every investment banker and every venture capitalist in Silicon Valley to just go absolutely nuts,” Roger McNamee, “Discussion about Hi Tech IPOs,” CNNfn, Cable News Network, 19 May 1997.
1 “The Net provides a powerful, efficient new channel of retailing . . .” Mary Meeker and Sharon Pearson, Internet Retailing Report (New York: Morgan Stanley, 1997), i.
2 “I saw a lot of research that kept saying people dislike grocery shopping . . .” “Consumer-Direct: Will Stores Survive?” Progressive Grocer, 1 April 1997.
3 Lucien Rhodes, “The Race for more Bandwidth,” Wired, January 1996.
4 “Because of the foregoing factors, among others, the Company is unable to forecast its revenues . . .” At Home prospectus, 16 May 1997:5.
5 “Now, as Doerr and a handful of At Home’s bosses and boosters hovered anxiously over a blue computer screen . . .” John Heilemann, “The Networker,” The New Yorker, 11 August 1997: 28.
6 “My-oh-my, you talk about a joyous Fourth of July!” Wall Street Week, ann. Louis Rukeyser, PBS, 4 July 1997.
7 “So, let’s make it three cheers for the red, white and green,” Ibid.
8 “I remember when we held a press conference around this time in 1972 . . .” David E. Sanger, “The Mantra for 1999: It’s the Best of Times,” New York Times, 3 May 1997.
9 “The unique nature of an expansion led by high-technology . . .” Michael J. Mandel, “The New Business Cycle,” Business Week, 31 March 1997: 58.
10 Michael J. Mandel, “The New Growth Formula,” Business Week, 19 May 1997: 31.
11 Ibid., 32–33.
12 “new era without depressions . . .” Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation (New York: Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 1999), 193.
13 “Civilization is taking on new aspects . . .” John Moody, “The New Era in Wall Street,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1928: 260.
14 Rik Kirkland, “America in the world: still on top, with no challenger,” Fortune, 9 June 1997: 86.
15 “non-regulatory, market-oriented approach,” John M. Broder, “Let It Be: Ira Magaziner Argues for Minimal Internet Regulations,” The New York Times, 30 June 1997: D1.
16 “exceptional . . . once or twice in a century phenomenon . . .” Alan Greenspan, Monetary Policy Testimony and Report to the Congress, 22 July 1997.
17 “What we may be observing in the current environment . . .” Ibid.
18 “sharp, incisive action . . .” John Cassidy, “Pricking the Bubble,” The New Yorker, 17 August 1998: 37.
19 Ibid., 40.
20 “There’s no guarantee that even if you get a 1929, you’ll end up with a 1932,” Lawrence B. Lindsey, Economic Puppetmasters: Lessons from the Halls of Power (Washington: AEI Press, 1999), 53.
21 “At the time of the weekly Board of Governors meeting, the U.S. economy was literally linked together by a single bridge . . .” Ibid., 30.
22 “What she did—through long discussions and lots of arguments into the night . . .” John Cassidy, “The Fountainhead,” The New Yorker, 24 April & 1 May 2000: 167.
23 “Ayn, this is incredible. . . .” Ibid.
24 “She did things in her personal life which I would not approve of . . .” Ibid., 168.
25 “Everybody is tired of being bearish and being wrong . . .” Barton Biggs, interview with the author, July 1997.
26 “I was at a dinner the other night. There were a lot of older people there who are very bearish,” Ibid.
27 “international stock market crash,” Anna-Patricia Kahn, “Nennen Sie mich ruhig einen Phantasten,” Focus, July 1997.
28 “rational exuberance about profits and near-zero inflation,” “Wall St. Contrarians Have It Tough,” Associated Press, 13 July 1997.
29 “an outstanding platform that I think will in three to five years lead to some fairly significant profits,” Brenda Dalglish, “Investors Bet Big on Pure Cable-Modem Play,” Financial Post, 9 October 1997.
30 “This has gotten more ink than my last six books,” Bob Minzesheimer, “Updike in the Teeth of Technology,” USA Today, 11 September 1997: 1D.
31 “We are making a long-term bet on this company . . .” Mary Meeker, “U.S. and the Americas Investment Research,” Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, 26 September 1997: 1.
32 Ibid.
1 “I don’t think anybody should do anything right now. . . .” Author’s notes.
2 “Asia’s down; Latin America’s down . . .” John Cassidy, “Department of Jitters,” The New Yorker, 10 November 1997: 41.
3 “We caught on to a Gulf War that’s going to last forever . . .” Ibid.
4 “We had a chance to define our brand, and we took it . . .” Ibid.
5 “A lot of financial journalists seem to hate capitalism . . .” Charles Fishman, “Colour Commentary of the New Economy,” Financial Post, 17 June 2000: D1.
6 “America is experiencing a serious asset-price bubble,” “America’s Bubble Economy,” The Economist, 18 April 1998: 15.
7 “This is unquestionably a bubble,” “Addressing the U.S. Bubble,” Financial Times, 22 April 1998: 1.
8 “America today is nothing like Japan eight years ago . . .” “The Economic Bubble Theory,” editorial, The New York Times, 29 April 1998.
9 Michael Hirsh, “Bubble Trouble?” Newsweek, 11 May 1998: 46.
10 “confidence-shattering crash” Susan E. Kuhn, “How Crazy Is This Market?” Fortune, 15 April 1996: 83.
11 Nelson D. Schwartz, “Time to Cash In Your Blue Chips,” Fortune, 21 July 1997.
12 “Seeing such price gains, you may have two questions . . .” Duff McDonald, “It’s Not Too Late to Grab Some Net,” Money, July 1998.
13 “In our 20th century consumer culture, it may seem almost too good to be true . . .” Michael Krantz, “Click Till You Drop,” Time, 20 July 1998: 39.
14 “more than the 30 million who tune in weekly to NBC’s top-rated TV show, ER,” Linda Himelstein, “Yahoo! The Company, the Strategy, the Stock,” Business Week, 7 September 1998: 67.
15 “We happened to launch on the same day that the Communications Decency Act was dealt a fatal blow . . .” Casey Kait and Stephen Weiss, Digital Hustlers: Living Large and Falling Hard in Silicon Valley (New York: ReganBooks, 2001), 163.
16 “It was unbelievable how traditional media . . .” Ibid., 165.
17 “a new generation of businesspeople . . .” The Founding Editors, “Annual Report,” Fast Company, February 1997.
18 Ibid.
19 “the senior level person who wakes up at night and wonders how the Net affects my business. . . .” Lisa Granastein, “Journals of E-Commerce,” Mediaweek, 22 June 1998.
20 “Imagine Media Launches Business 2.0: The Magazine for Business in the Internet Age,” PR Newswire, 2 April 1998.
21 “The New Economy—decentralized and antihierarchical—is the most promising opportunity in years. . . .” Ibid.
22 “The personal computer is the communications tool that has made all the difference. . . .” James J. Cramer, “Special: Cramer on the Power of the Individual Investor,” TheStreet.com, 4 April 1997.
23 “We’ll have stuff that will blow your mind. . . .” Melanie Warner, “The Trader Who Won’t Shut Up,” Fortune, 12 May 1997: 19.
24 “I am a big believer in the Internet. . . .” ABCNews.com, 27 March 1998.
25 “We simply don’t have enough pieces of paper . . .” TheStreet.com, 24 June 1998.
26 “There are companies whose businesses wouldn’t exist . . .” Kathleen Doler, “A Conversation with Co-Founder of TheStreet.com: James Cramer, Columnist, Trader and Wild Man,” Upside, November 1998.
27 “He’s on track to enter Wall Street’s hall of fame for ubiquity . . .” Kimberly S. McDonald, “High-Profile Hedger,” New York Post, 14 December 1997: 66.
1 “I think there is a good deal of comparison between the market in 1929 and the market today,” Cassidy, “Pricking the Bubble,” 38.
2 “I define a bubble as a situation in which the level of stock prices is high . . .” Ibid.
3 “Some members expressed concern that the widespread perception of reduced risk . . .” Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee, 19 May 1998.
4 “a number of members indicated that the decision was a close call for them,” Ibid.
5 “Failing that, firming actions on the part of the Federal Reserve may be necessary to ensure a track of expansion . . .” Monetary Policy Testimony and Report to the Congress; Testimony of Alan Greenspan, 21 July 1998.
6 “History tells us that there will be a correction of some significant dimension . . .” Jacob M. Schlesinger, “Greenspan Tempers Economic Optimism,” The Wall Street Journal, 23 July 1998.
7 S. C. Gwynne, “Is the Boom Over?” Time, 14 September 1998.
8 “just not credible that the United States can remain an oasis of prosperity . . .” Ibid., 28.
9 “I think we know where we have to go,” Richard W. Stevenson, “Fed Chairman Renews Hopes for a Rate Cut,” The New York Times, 24 September 1998: C1.
10 “to cushion the effects on prospective economic growth . . .” Federal Reserve Press Release, 29 September 1998.
11 David Wessel, “How the Fed Fumbled, and Then Recovered, in Making Policy Shift,” The Wall Street Journal, 17 November 1998.
12 “Without actually saying it, Greenspan is saying: ‘We’re going to supply liquidity to the system . . .’ ” Tom Petruno, “Fed Cut Sends Many Signals,” The Los Angeles Times, 16 October 1998: C1.
13 “This is a way of telling everyone, the lifeguard is back on duty; you can go back in the pool,” John M. Berry, “Greenspan Orders Interest Rate Cut,” The Washington Post, 16 October 1998: A1.
14 “We feel the cyclical bear market is over,” Christopher Byron, “Byron’s Index Shows Investors Still Buying Everything,” TheStreet.com, 6 November 1998.
15 “I agree, things are bound to get even crazier . . .” TSC Staff, “Net Stocks: Is Now the Time to Buy?” 10 November 1998.
1 “I have enquired of some that have come from London, what is the religion there? . . .” Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation (New York: Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 1999), 77.
2 “miserable mercenary Period,” Ibid., 76.
3 “The demon stock jobbing is the genius of this place . . .” Ibid., 77.
4 “Few Men, who follow Reason’s Rules, Grow Fat with South-Sea Diet . . .” Ibid., 70.
5 “There is nothing so disturbing to one’s well-being and judgment as to see a friend get rich,” Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (New York: John Wiley, 1996), 13.
6 Randall E. Stross, eBoys (New York: Crown Business, 2000).
7 “EBay’s market opportunity is huge,” Mary Meeker, “U.S. and the Americas Investment Research,” 24 September 1998: 1.
8 “I sold my TGLO at 88—who wouldn’t?” Cory Johnson, “Are Net IPOs out to Lunch?” TheStreet.com, 22 November 1998.
9 “I’ve had days similar to this, but this definitely feels good,” Walter Hamilton, “TheGlobe.com Sets Record for 1st-Day Trading,” Los Angeles Times, 14 November 1998: C1.
10 Beth Piskora and Andy Geller, “Net Geeks Strike Gold in $97M Stock Bonanza,” New York Post, 14 November 1998: 5.
11 “Although conditions in financial markets have settled down materially . . .” Federal Reserve Press Release, 11 November 1998.
12 “This ought to be the preeminent Internet company over the next decade,” Steve Lohr and John Markoff, “Deal Is Concluded on Netscape Sale to America Online,” The New York Times, 25 November 1998: A1.
13 “In an emerging and dynamic industry like the Internet . . .” News Release, PR Newswire, 9 November, 1998.
14 “incredibly expensive,” Suzanne Galante, “The 400 Blow,” TheStreet.com, 16 December 1998.
15 “Amazon’s valuation is clearly more art than science . . .” Ibid.
16 “If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale,” John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash: 1929 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 64.
17 “First of all, you wouldn’t get ‘hype’ working if there weren’t something fundamentally, potentially sound . . .” Steven Mufson and John M. Berry, “Frenzy for Internet Stocks Gains Backer—Greenspan,” The Washington Post, 29 January 1999: A1.
18 “the Fed’s gentle genius,” Rich Miller, “Fed’s Gentle Genius Brings a Unique Grace to the Job,” USA Today, 23 February 1999: A1.
19 Lewis, 104.
20 Ibid., 187.
1 “Based on my experience at, and my knowledge of, iVillage . . .” Sandra Rubin, “Controversy Hits iVillage as Stock Debut Looms,” National Post, 9 March 1999.
2 “With every IPO the envelope is being pushed a little further . . .” John Cassidy, “The Woman in the Bubble,” The New Yorker, 26 April 1999: 65.
3 “We are seeing the second generation of Internet entrepreneurs, and they have market cap envy of the Jerry Yangs and Marc Andreessens. . . .” Mary Meeker, interview with the author, 25 March 1999.
4 “There are 1.9 million items for sale . . .” Ibid.
5 “The overall Internet stock phenomenon may well be a ‘bubble’ . . .” Henry Blodget, Internet/Electronic Commerce Report, 9 March 1999.
6 “I don’t want to be the Internet stock poster child,” Mary Meeker, interview with the author, 25 March 1999.
7 “If Amazon.com executes to its plan, it’s a very powerful business . . .” Mary Meeker, interview with the author, 15 March 1999.
8 “(Meeker) has been a terrific adviser in many ways . . .” Meg Whitman, interview with the author, March 1999.
9 “The people buying Internet stocks don’t think they are buying Morgan Stanley, American Express, or Berkshire Hathaway . . .” Joseph Perella, interview with the author, March 1999.
10 “Mary is one of a kind,” Ibid.
11 “This is a time to be rationally reckless . . .” Mary Meeker, interview with the author, 25 March 1999.
12 “We just think Mary is the best . . .” Cassidy, “The Woman in the Bubble,” 56.
13 “What we are looking at is confirmation in the stock market that the U.S. economy is in excellent condition . . .” Ianthe Jean Dugan and Robert O’Harrow, “Dow Tops 10,000, Fueling Debate on Its Future,” The Washington Post, 30 March 1999: A1.
14 “It’s no longer a ceiling; it’s a floor,” Ibid.
15 “The difference is that the real values are being created . . .” Mary Meeker, interview with the author, 1 April 1999.
16 “THIS WEEK’S BILLIONAIRES,” The Industry Standard, 12 April 1999.
17 “wagering billions of dollars on complex business stories . . .” Michael Parsons, “I Want to Believe,” The Industry Standard, 12 April 1999: 2.
18 “Jewish guy with a lot of guilt, slightly misunderstood, trying to change an industry . . .” Vanessa Grigoriadis, “Silicon Valley 10003,” New York, 6 March 2000.
19 “I’m thrilled. TheStreet.com is like the people’s choice . . .” Gary Strauss, “Sunny Side of TheStreet.com,” USA Today, 12 May 1999: 1B.
1 “As soon as I wake up in the morning, I turn on CNBC. . . .” Author’s notes.
2 Matthew Schifrin, “Free Enterprise Comes to Wall Street,” Forbes, 6 April 1998.
3 “investment should be for the long run—not for minutes or hours,” Steven Mufson, “Levitt Warns of Online Trading,” The Washington Post, 28 January 1999.
4 “Anyone who has ever played Space Invaders knows the drill . . .” Steve Bodow, “Short Term Prophets,” Wired, January 1999: 165.
5 “If they follow the rules, they’ll succeed . . .” Mike Snow, “Day-Trade Believers Teach High-Risk Investing,” The Washington Post, 6 July 1998: 15.
6 “I don’t plan to live very much longer . . .” Evan Thomas and T. Trent Gegax, “It’s a Bad Trading Day . . . And It’s About to Get Worse,” Newsweek, 9 August 1999: 22.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 “the best entertainment since television. . . .” Geoffrey Smith, Mike McNamee, and Leah Nathans Spiro, “Day of Reckoning for Day-Trading Firms?” Business Week, 18 January 1999: 88.
10 “a serious threat to Americans’ financial lives,” James Kim and David Rynecki, “Merrill Lynch Hears Net’s Call,” USA Today, 2 June 1999: 1B.
11 “It’s clear that there is a segment of the marketplace that wants access to Merrill Lynch . . .” David Komansky, transcript of CNBC broadcast, 1 June 1999.
12 Fidelity Investments, press release, 9 March 2000.
13 Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Touchstone, 2000).
14 Deborah Adamson, “Stock Together: Investor Clubs Seek to Make Fake Fortunes in Stock Contest,” The Daily News of L.A., 15 February 1999.
15 Brad M. Barber and Terrance Odean, “Trading Is Hazardous to Your Health: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors,” Journal of Finance 55.2 (April 2000): 773–806.
16 “Recent Changes in U.S. Family Finances: Results from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances,” Federal Reserve Bulletin, February 2000.
17 Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch, “Learning from the Behavior of Others: Conformity, Fads, and Informational Cascades,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998: 151–170.
18 “However, this can be costly and time-consuming . . .” Ibid., 152–153.
19 “allowing individuals to take advantage of the hard-won information . . .” Ibid., 152.
20 “Public information stops accumulating . . .” Ibid., 155.
21 “is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will,” http://paradigm.soci.brocku.ca/lward/LeBon/lebon-01-01.html
22 “The fact that (individuals) have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind. . . .” Ibid.
23 Charles Gasparino, “Leading Merrill Stock Strategist to Leave Firm by Year End,” The Wall Street Journal, 27 August 1999.
1 “I’m going to start an Internet company,” Author’s notes.
2 “I didn’t want to miss the next Industrial Revolution,” Betsy Morris, “Take Your Blue-Chip Job and Shove It!” Fortune, 2 August 1999: 60.
3 “There’s never been a time in contemporary history . . .” Steven Wilmsen, “MBAs Are the Latest Net Gain,” The Boston Globe, 9 May 1999: A1.
4 “Annual Report,” Fast Company, February 1997.
5 “It was absurdly easy . . .” Interview with the author, March 2001.
6 “Naw. It’s going to be ten billion. Or zero,” Randall E. Stross, eBoys (New York: Crown, 2000), 43.
7 “may be the most innovative E-commerce venture to date,” Linda Himelstein, “Can You Sell Groceries Like Books?” Business Week, 26 July 1999.
8 “This is the first back-end re-engineering of an entire industry,” Ibid.
9 “set the rules for the largest consumer sector in the economy,” Mary Dejevsky, “Totally Bananas,” Independent (London), 10 November 1999: 1.
10 “We invest only in companies that share our passion for customers . . .” PR Newswire, “Amazon.com Announces Investment in Pets.com,” 29 March 1999.
11 “There is a huge potential for growth in the pet category as an e-commerce play . . .” PR Newswire, “Petopia.com Announces $9 Million Equity Investment from Technology Crossover Ventures,” 10 May 1999.
12 “half the potheads in New York,” Adam L. Penenberg, “The Internet May Be Global, but Kozmo is Going Local,” Forbes, 18 October 1999: 164.
13 “ ‘We’re going to put the fun back into funerals,’ . . .” Randy Komisar, The Monk and the Riddle (Boston: HBS Press, 2000), 7.
14 “It wasn’t just about the money . . .” Michael Hirschorn, interview with the author, March 2001.
15 “ ‘I think we can end up nicely north . . .’ ” Kurt Andersen, Turn of the Century (New York: Random House, 1999), 432.
16 “No one feels guilty about being rich anymore . . .” Joanna Coles, “The New American Gold Rush,” Times (London), 10 August 1999.
1 George Soros, The Alchemy of Finance (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1987).
2 “Additionally, drugstore.com maintained a level of 48 percent engaged shoppers (a unique user . . . ),” Gretchen Morgenson, “How Did They Value Stocks? Count the Absurd Ways,” The New York Times, 10 March 2001.
3 “How Much Is the Stock Market Overvalued?” http://fairmodel.econ.yale.edu
4 “looks more plausible all the time . . .” Kevin Kelly, “The Good News Is, You’ll Be a Millionaire Soon,” Wired, September 1999: 151.
5 “I don’t think Internet valuations are crazy . . .” Kevin Kelly, “Prophets of Boom,” Wired, September 1999: 156.
6 “For the past ten years I have been one of the most bullish forecasters about the future . . .” Kevin Kelly, “Happy Days,” Wired, September 1999: 159.
7 “Face it: Out there in some garage an entrepreneur is forging a bullet with your company’s name on it,” Gary Hamel, “Bringing Silicon Valley Inside,” Harvard Business Review, September/October 1999.
8 Helen Jung, “Amazon’s Bezos: Internet’s Ultimate Cult Figure,” Seattle Times, 19 September 1999: A1.
9 “When we try to comprehend something as vast, amorphous, and downright scary as the Internet . . .” Robert D. Hof, “A New Era of Bright Hopes and Terrible Fears,” Business Week, 4 October 1999: 84.
10 “It’s not only the dominant online bookseller . . .” Steven Levy, “Special Report,” Newsweek, 11 October 1999: 50.
11 “Sixteen months ago, we were a place where people came to buy books . . .” Leslie Kaufman, “Amazon.com Plans a Transformation to Internet Bazaar,” The New York Times, 30 September 1999: A1.
12 “It’s a completely new model,” Josh McHugh, “The $29 Billion Flea Market,” Forbes, 1 November 1999: 66.
13 “as tired as we are of endless postponement of gratification,” Gretchen Morgenson, “Market Watch: Over the Rainbow With Amazon.com,” The New York Times, 31 October 1999: C1.
14 “The thing that always amazed me was how powerful his vision was . . .” Joshua Quittner, “An Eye on the Future,” Time, 27 December 1999: 56.
15 “The new media stock market valuations are real . . .” Steve Lohr, “Medium for Main Street,” The New York Times, 11 January 2000: C10.
16 “The Internet boom looks less ephemeral today,” Editorial, “The Biggest Media Merger Yet,” The New York Times, 11 January 2000.
17 “marks the beginning of the end of the old mass media,” Peter Huber, “The Death of Old Media,” The Wall Street Journal, 11 January 2000.
18 “It was a brilliant piece of financial engineering . . .” Rupert Murdoch, interview with the author, 16 February 2001.
19 “We really believe in saying, ‘Hey, these are the opportunities that are ahead of us . . .’ ” Jerry Yang, interview with the author, 7 February 2000.
1 “the power and impact of the new technologies on the New Economy . . .” William Jefferson Clinton, White House Transcript, 4 January 2000.
2 “judgments of millions . . .” Jacob M. Schlesinger, “How Greenspan Finally Came to Terms with the Stock Market,” The Wall Street Journal, 8 May 2000: A1.
3 “awesome changes . . .” Alan Greenspan, “Technology and the Economy,” Remarks before the Economic Club of New York, 13 January 2000.
4 “In short, information technology raises output per hour . . .” Ibid.
5 “imbalance between growth of supply and growth of demand . . .” Ibid.
6 “does not mean that prices of assets cannot keep rising . . .” Ibid.
7 Greg Johnson, “Super Bowl’s ‘Dot-Com’ Ads Mostly Unmemorable,” Los Angeles Times, 2 February 2000: C3.
8 “remains concerned that over time increases in demand will continue to exceed the growth in potential supply . . .” Federal Reserve, press release, 2 February 2000.
9 “When Alan Greenspan speaks, the Old Economy trembles . . .” Floyd Norris, “Technology Investors Tune Out Greenspan,” The New York Times, 18 February 2000.
10 “The Italians want to be in this market, and they want to own technology . . .” Kenneth L. Gilpin, “The Market Stocks: Demand for Technology Shares Drives Nasdaq to Record,” The New York Times, 8 February 2000: C15.
11 “Sooner rather than later, the New Economy boom is likely to be followed by a New Economy bust,” Michael J. Mandel, “The Risk that Boom Will Turn to Bust,” Business Week, 14 February 2000: 120.
12 “drive toward profitability,” Roger Yu, “Amazon Sales Soar as Red Ink Spreads,” Seattle Times, 3 February 2000: E1.
13 “a business that can become quite profitable,” Saul Hansell, “Amazon Loss Soared 543% in 4th Quarter” The New York Times, 3 February 2000: C1.
14 “the most successful central banker in the history of the United States,” Phil Gramm, “Humphrey-Hawkins Report on U.S. Monetary Policy,” transcript, 23 February 2000.
15 “I think people hear what you are saying and conclude that you believe that equities are overvalued. . . .” Ibid.
16 “If we get interest rates at double digits, we are going to stop the economy in its tracks . . .” Ibid.
17 “We are suggesting, as an institution, that the stock market is too high . . .” John Cassidy, “The Fountainhead,” The New Yorker, 24 April 2000: 162.
18 “seems undervalued by almost any measure,” Robert D. Hershey Jr., “Nasdaq in Record Gain to New High, but Blue Chips Fall,” The New York Times, 24 February 2000: C14.
19 “We had amazing cultural timing . . .” Vanessa Grigoriadis, “Silicon Alley 10003,” New York, 6 March 2000.
20 Ibid.
21 “It brought us the microprocessor, the computer, satellites . . .” Alan Greenspan, remarks before the Boston College conference on the New Economy, 6 March 2000.
22 “superlatively moral system,” Cassidy, “The Fountainhead,” 168.
23 Ibid.
24 Greenspan, Boston College conference.
1 “When will the Internet Bubble burst? . . .” Jack Willoughby, “Burning Up,” Barron’s, 20 March 2000: 29.
2 “are weighted mainly toward conditions that may generate heightened inflation pressures . . .” Federal Reserve, press release, 21 March 2000.
3 “The market is spitting in his eye,” Robert D. Hershey, “Technology Lifts Nasdaq and Pushes S. & P. Over 1,500,” The New York Times, 23 March 2000: C12.
4 Marcia Vickers and Gary Weiss, “Wall Street’s Hype Machine,” Business Week, 3 April 2000.
5 “including Business Week, has fueled the explosion . . .” Ibid., 117.
6 “If you look closely, it’s beginning . . .” Walter Hamilton, “Nasdaq Falls 189 As Tech Sell-Off Widens; Dow Up,” Los Angeles Times, 30 March 2000: C1.
7 “We believe that the very fundamentals of our economy still look very, very strong,” Thomas S. Mulligan, “Wall Street Nose-Dives, Then Rallies By Day’s End,” Los Angeles Times, 5 April 2000: A1.
8 “For the past decade, we have been enthusiastic about the outlook for stock prices . . .” Times Staff, “Calm Follows Storm, Market Indexes Mixed,” Los Angeles Times, 6 April 2000: C1.
9 “We’ve got a great low yield on interest rates . . .” TSC Staff, TV transcripts, TheStreet.com, 10 April 2000.
10 Marcia Vickers and Jeffrey M. Laderman, “Wall Street: Is the Party Over?” Business Week, 17 April 2000.
11 “could have further to fall . . .” Economist staff, “Monopoly Money,” The Economist, 8 April 2000.
12 “The technology sector has begun an important corrective trend,” Times staff and wire reports, “Nasdaq gets hammered again as techs slump,” Los Angeles Times, 11 April 2000: C1.
13 “We are watching the developments in the markets, as we always do . . .” Larry Summers, interview on CNN Street Sweep, 14 April 2000.
14 “We’re going to see the weaker companies come under more pressure,” Sandra Sugawara, “Wall St. Collapse Tests Faith in ‘New Economy,’ ” The Washington Post, 15 April 2000: A1.
15 “Perhaps we haven’t seen a bottom yet . . .” Times Staff, Bloomberg News, “Market Savvy,” Los Angeles Times, 20 April 2000: C4.
16 “And I can tell you that it’s a sobering and humiliating experience . . .” NBC News transcripts, “Jim Cramer, TheStreet.com, Discusses Rebound in Stock Market,” Today, 18 April 2000.
17 “Yeah, it’s over. The Gold Rush is over,” Ibid.
1 “in light of the extraordinary and persisting strength of overall demand,” Federal Reserve, press release, 16 May 2000.
2 “a gateway to world cool,” Susan Orenstein, “Boo.com: A Cautionary Tale,” Industry Standard, 5 June 2000.
3 “In public and in private, the worrywarts, killjoys, and practitioners of the dismal science . . .” Gerard Baker, “Fed Passes Round the Punchbowl in Celebration,” The Financial Times, 7 September 2000: 15.
4 “It is well known that this is a very, very difficult environment for business-to-consumer Internet companies . . .” Reed Abelson, “Pets.com: Sock Puppet’s Home, Will Close,” The New York Times, 8 November 2000: C4.
5 “Don’t invest in dotcoms,” ABC News transcripts, “Sock Puppet Talks About Surviving a Plummeting Stock Market,” Good Morning America, 1 December 2000.
6 “weakening asset values in financial markets . . .” Michael Mandel, “Tech Leads—Both Up and Down,” Business Week, 8 December 2000: 62.
7 “weighted mainly toward conditions that may generate economic weakness . . .” Federal Reserve Press Release, 18 December 2000.
8 “in light of further weakening of sales and production . . .” Richard W. Stevenson and Louis Uchitelle, “Markets Surge, but Full Effects on Consumers Will Take Longer,” The New York Times, 4 January 2001: C9.
9 “They saw the N.A.P.M., and it scared the pants off them,” Ibid.
10 “One of the messages Dr. Greenspan sent was that we need bold action . . .” Ibid.
11 “We were waiting for something at the end of the rainbow . . .” Saul Hansell, “Disney, in Retreat from Internet, to Abandon Go.com Portal Site,” The New York Times, 30 January 2001.
12 “Persistent pressures on profit margins are restraining investment spending . . .” Federal Reserve Press Release, 21 March 2001.
13 “different kind of executive,” David Leonhardt, “Early Defector to a Dot-Com Is Leaving an Online Grocer,” The New York Times, 16 April 2001: C1.
14 “We have been the whipping boy because of the name . . .” Cassell Bryan-Low, “By Any Other Name, A Dot-Com Would Be Sweeter to Investors,” The Wall Street Journal, 15 April 2000.
15 “I’ve worked on so many Web projects, and today they’re all gone . . .” Paul Andrews, “The Virtual Dead Live on in Museum of Web Failures,” International Herald Tribune, 25 May 2001: 13.
16 “It’s easy to say we could have opened a few less markets . . .” Saul Hansell, “An Ambitious Internet Grocer Is Out of Both Cash and Ideas,” The New York Times, 10 July 2001.
17 Peter Elkind, “Can We Ever Trust Wall Street Again,” Fortune, 14 May 2001.
18 “nuclear winter . . .” Ibid.
19 “knew that the financial condition and future business prospects of Amazon.com did not support her positive comments . . .” Colleen DeBaise and Nick Wingfield, “Morgan Stanley Star Tech Analyst Faces Lawsuit Over Bullish Calls,” The Wall Street Journal, 2 August 2001.
1 Jeffrey R. Brown and Austan Goolsbee, “Does the Internet Make Markets More Competitive? Evidence form the Life Insurance Industry.” October 2000.
2 Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Productivity and Costs: Second Quarter 2001,” 7 August 2001.
3 Robert E. Litan and Alice M. Rivlin, “The Economy and the Internet: What Lies Ahead?” Conference report, Brookings Institution, December 2000.
4 “Internet surfing may be fun. . . .” Robert J. Gordon, “Does the ‘New Economy’ Measure Up to the Great Inventions of the Past?” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 7833, August 2000.
5 “The notion that Americans are a sordid, money-grubbing people . . .” Marion Elizabeth Rogers, ed. The Impossible H. L. Mencken (New York: Anchor Books, 1991), 21.
6 “At Home Files for Bankruptcy; Will Sell a Unit,’ ” Matt Richtel, The New York Times, 29 September 2001: C1.
7. “Wall Street’s Internet-Stock Star Calls It Quits,” Patrick McGeehan, The New York Times, 15 November 2001: A1.