The Decade of “truthiness” finally has come to an end. A decade which started with the promise of a new age of unbridled prosperity has ended with a renewed realism about the limits of economics and war.
Truth be told, just a few months after the start of the decade the irrational exuberance of the dotcom period began unraveling. Meteoric risers like CMGI (A big winner with online companies like Lycos and Altavista among others) quickly saw their stock prices more than halved in just a few months.
But our faith in booms didn’t waiver. Shortly after the attacks of 9-11 which came more than a year after the dotcom crash. A new boom would come to captivate our imaginations.
Soon, instead of a “new economy” characterized by business plans which sold stock to starry eyed investors on the idea that the Internet was a new age styled land rush where the first ones to stake the largest claims would somehow reap a crop of the greatest profits. (A business model that Google would shatter, because they came to market years after market shares were seemingly solidified by a short list of Internet Search companies. And a business model that Google has eventually somewhat vindicated, since Google alone has been able to gain and retain their market share and profit unlike the very first generation of Internet companies whose business plans had them trying to squeeze their audience/customers instead of catering to their needs.
Instead, for most of this decade Americans chose the rock solid investment of real estate. Buoyed by interest rates reduced through government control and subsidies, homeowners became investors and investors bought up homes faster than they could be built. In America house prices had gone up for as long as anyone had kept records. Statistics showed that you could make big profits with the only risk that the rate of growth might slow and you would have to wait longer to reap your profits.
Those who were reasoning against the prospects of endless growth in anything, or pointing out that the salaries that ultimately would pay for these homes were not keeping pace, were largely ignored. There was profit to be made, and just like the end of the dotcom boom, everyone began to realize prices were unsustainable, but no one wanted to lose out on the last bit of profit while momentum of “the market” carried prices higher.
But no one can talk about the the decade of the aughts without looking at the war that ought not to have been.
America’s invasion of Iraq which was sold as a UN police action, but was really a result of the United States being unable to accept their enemy, Saddam Hussein, being in control of so much of the strategic resource of oil just as peak oil was on the horizon and prices were rising.
The war in Iraq dominated the decade while Afghanistan simmered in the background.
Futurists always looked to the new millennium as heralding advents of new technologies that would improve people’s lives. While the wide adoption of the Internet and wireless devices has revolutionized communication, many of the revolutions in transportation and energy have yet to materialize.
Electricity too cheap to meter would usher in a new age of mankind. But it hasn’t. [Read more →]
It was a story 22 years in the making. Superstitious fatalism was shown the door Tuesday night as the Celtics 39 point win over the LA Lakers completed a 4-2 championship series victory. The Celtics team has had a rough time rebuilding after the “Big Three” years of the 1980’s. Celtics tragedy, with Len Bias’ and Reggie Lewis’ tragic deaths having led some to believe that the Celtics and not the Red Sox were Boston’s cursed team.