Greenspan should have removed the punch bowl
The Daily Telegraph: In late 1999, Fed officials coming together for their regular Federal Open Market Committee took stock of the irrational exuberance then gripping the investment community.
VA Linux, a company that gained 700 percent in its IPO, had just disclosed in a filing that it might never make a cent. All this prompted staff economist Mike Prell to wonder whether a state of temporary insanity had now settled over lower Manhattan.
??"Not bad for a company that some analysts say has no hold on any significant technology," Prell tells the meeting. "The warning language I've just read is at least an improvement in disclosure compared to the classic prospectus of the South Sea Bubble era, in which someone offered shares in 'a company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is'. But, I wonder whether the spirit of the times isn't becoming similar to that of the earlier period."
Makes you pine for Bernie Ebbers, doesn't it?
Charles Cooper has covered technology and business for more than 25 years. Before joining CNET News, he worked at the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie. 
