Likewise, the paper “billionaires” of 1999—whose IPOs had yielded them options worth more than several African countries—were never anything like that rich. Their shares, which were “worth” $30 billion or something, were impossible to sell. The moment these 30-year-old hucksters started trying to unload the stocks, their value would plummet—based as it was on nothing. No profits, meager earnings, nothing more than the fantasy that a “greater fool” would come along to pay hundreds of millions for shares in a company that sold Hindu devotional mousepads made from recycled condoms. In the end, we ran out of fools.
So as I use my quarterly 401(k) statement to clean up after the beagles, I console myself with the thought that the annual gains of 25% which they earned throughout the 90s never really existed. They were promises of consumption, based not on previous savings, but the hope of future loans. Faery, insubstantial creatures of light and air, which vanished with the first ray of the dawn. The beagles, at least, are real.
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