the company mgmt was pumping it all the way during that time - like the rest of wall street, pumping it to keep the little guy in, while dumping and shorting their own shares.
the period of the lates 90s into 2000, was the biggest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the elites, in US history. and very few have been prosecuted for it.
my actual sense is that the bleeding started way back in the golden years of Clinton, when the DBM propped up that sucker with false stories of how rich we all were getting....
as a wage earner, I can tell you that my wages went up very litte, my insurances and utility bills and medical costs and property taxes went skyrocketing...
IMO and AFAIK and IIRC , all the major financial misdeeds started or occurred during the Toon years, but only got prosecuted in the Bush years...