They also probably realize that there was a lot of very dumb thinking going on while the boom was still alive. What they probably don't realize is just how deep the intellectual rot went. I was involved in the computer business during the boom, so I had a ringside seat to a lot of the nonsense that went on. Fortunately, a lot of it will now go away. The key to the new economy fantasy was the mutual reinforcement of stupid ideas by stupid money.
Stupid money is money that gets made without hard work.
This was quite stinging in a world where the fundamental profitability of many dot-companies was totally irrelevant to whether they made money for their investors. The creepy thing, of course, is that this argument concedes that the fundamental economic logic is against it. It just doesn't care, and the scary thing is that it doesn't have to. But fundamentals are, of course, never irrelevant, and having a stock market that makes people think they are, is a recipe for disaster in the long run. A speculative boom in the stock market can't change the basic laws of business, like the idea that companies have to make a profit, but it can, dangerously, make people believe that they have changed.