Dot.Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold

Summary

This is a sceptical history of the internet/stock market boom. The author argues that the dot.com craze wasn't simply a stock market bubble; it was a social and cultural phenomenon driven by broad historical forces. Cassidy explains how these forces combined to produce the buying hysteria that drove the prices of loss-making companies into the stratosphere. Much has been made of the phrase irrational exuberance , but this text shows that there was nothing irrational about what happened. The people involved - fund managers, stock analysts, journalists and pundits - were simply acting in their own self-interest. Technology provided the raw material for the boom, but that is only part of the story. This book describes and explains the all-too-human behaviour of the stock market bubble: how it got going; sustained itself for longer than anybody expected; and then, just when people were starting to think it might not be a speculative bubble after all, went pop.