Muzak and The Bubble

The Hives are really good. Remember when you were 17 and drove your car with the windows down, blasting your stereo? Well it dawned on me, while listening to their cd, that people generally do this because they think what they are listening to is the cat's meow. And they want others to know how cool they are. Since I am getting old and curmudgeonly, I don't often have the urge to blast my stereo with the windows down. I still blast it though. And today, stuck at a stoplight with cars all around, I fought the urge to roll down the windows, to let those around me know just how cool I am, because I'm blasting The Hives.

How stoked am I that Tool is rolling through town next month? I saw them in Portland a couple of years ago. They are also good.

On to the bubble. People have struggled immensely with their investment planning in the last couple of years. It's no wonder, with many people buying into the absolute internet stock hysteria. I will never forget talking with many of my friends in the Bay Area in 98 and 99 regarding investment planning. Everyone was an expert. Everyone of them had an Etrade, Ameritrade or Schwab account. They really, seriously believed that they were great stockpickers, that they could take a grand and turn it into a hundred grand. This was extremely disconcerting. Because I was in Oregon at the time, I was far enough away from the hysteria that I didn't encounter it on a daily basis. But every trip to the Bay was agony, with people telling me how stupid I was to own bonds, mortgage securities, or an international fund.

My point is simply that common sense, all sense, was lost. What I realized, very early on, was that this internet hysteria actually was a mob mentality in action. I came across an interesting article today that takes this concept even further. The author, a former CSFB analyst, postulates that the internet bubble is akin to a decentralized pyramid scheme. It's definitely a thought-provoking piece. It also has a couple of links to another cool site.