<<. 'Global Crossing going bankrupt?' Gilder asks, a look of disbelief on his face. 'I would've been willing to bet my house against it.' In effect he did. Just a few years ago he was the toast of Wall Street and commanded as much as $100,000 per speech. Now he confesses he's broke and has a lien against his home.">>
Poor deluded fool! If only he'd listened to Heinz, it could of all been different! This was perhaps the single most titanic post exchange in the history of SI:
Heinz's opening gambit:
Message 13834350
Gilder's incredibly arrogant and condescending retort (note the cheap parting insult):
siliconinvestor.com
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Heinz's coolly measured coup-de-grace:
Message 13839418
(This part is absolutely beautiful, <snif>):
we have had investment manias with a backdrop of rapid technological innovation, low inflation and loose monetary policies before...and at their tail end the gurus always show up to explain to us how it's different this time and how the laws of supply and demand have been repealed in the 'new era'.
a look back in history will disabuse one of these notions - the bull market of the 1920's was also driven by technological innovations of great import (electricity, cars, aviation, telephone, radio, mass-manufacturing, are equally, if not more momentous innovations as the ones we have developed in modern times), a loose monetary policy (the credit explosion in the current boom is however many times larger relative to GDP and disposable income) and disinflation. the productivity gains achieved from '21 to '29 were in fact slightly larger than those achieved during the nineties.
but then, the stock market has a tendency to price all these wonderful things into one euphoric moment...that's usually also precisely the moment when we hear that the trees will indeed grow to the sky.
<<the enrichment of stock market values in the face of a hostile Federal Reserve>> that's the key sentence...like others before you you believe that the persistence of the stock market mania is proof of something...all it proves is that there is too much liquidity sloshing about in the system and that we have an open-ended fantasy that helps us deploy it.
that's human nature - it never changes.
Easily one of the very finest moments in all of SI history, never equalled before or since!<NG> Now Gilder is broke, and Heinz? I'd be willing to wager he's doing just fine! |
