The Atlantic

More Money Than Anyone Imagined

A quick explanation for why the tech bubble never burst
Source: Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

Eight years ago, we were in the midst of a frothy, frothy tech bubble.

It was all anyone could talk about—at investor conferences, in the pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, in notes by research analysts. “Irrational exuberance has returned to the internet world,” The Economist warned, in one of many stories on the topic. That late-1990s feeling was “back,” said , LinkedIn’s business model and arguing that “American ingenuity and American gullibility” were thriving in Silicon Valley. This magazine was to writing about it, nor was .

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