[Mr. Bird]

There were a few of us back then warning people not to get trapped in the stock market bubble.

Actually, there were several people doing this. Crudele seems to be saying "I told you so", but he fails to mention one instance where he was speaking with any specific knowledge on the subject. Like many, he probably took a look at P/E's approaching 200 and thought things looked a little fishy.

Yes, corrupt firms and their analysts bilked billions, trillions even from investors. However, anyone who invested thinking we were in a "new paradigm", where a company didn't need to earn money to be valuable was just an idiot. Remember, with few exceptions (Enron the most notable), the books weren't cooked; you could see plain as day that a company was sucking wind.

[Liz]

Agreed, yet I can't blame investors for thinking that Enron, for exmaple, was a buy. Who knew lowlifes like Fastow and Skilling were behind the scenes....and offshore...... cooking the books? Some of Fastow's cooked-up deals were fantastical. He had his whole family in on deals, as well, sucking the life out of Enron.

The billion dollar telecoms sprung from nowhere, like Global X, looked too good to be true....and they were......

As for the hotshot analysts, how could anyone believe the likes of Jack Grubman who was sitting on boards like WorldCom that he was pumping or should I say pimping?

As they were saying on Main Street at the time of the stock market bubble, "Where are the investors' yachts?"