At Hertfordshire University's Complexity and Management Centre, professor Ralph Stacey suggests looking at surges like the Internet and biotech companies in evolutionary terms. Unfortunately, neither conventional economics nor complexity theory delivers prescriptions for how new strains of the bubble virus should be treated. Their immunity to official medicine is well illustrated by the present long-running bull market on Wall Street. That depends how much of the rest of Wall Street it brings down with it. This too is unpredictable, although most observers believe there's at least a risk of a sharp US recession.
Policy makers are extremely worried.
But unless people change their economic behaviour, which is possible but unlikely, it won't happen like that. History doesn't have any examples of these things occurring comfortably. But many commentators draw disturbing parallels between the present situation and that of Japan a decade ago. It's possible that stupendous investment in information technology really has moved the US economy to a plane of performance which justifies Wall Street's euphoria, as the optimists argue. But history suggests a different view.