Aftershock: Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown, 4th Edition

Epilogue: Say Good-Bye to the Age of Excess

It’s sad to see it all go. It was the party of the century and not just in the United States, but around the world as well. The Age of Excess was like no other time in U.S. history, and there will never be a time like it again because eventually we do learn from our mistakes, even if painfully so. And how quickly we will forget the good times and how good they were when faced with the “shock and awe” of the Aftershock that will end the Age of Excess. This epilogue is dedicated to reminding us how good the Age of Excess really was.

But where do we begin? There was so much excess. First, there were all the corporate executives and investment bankers, who made hundreds of millions of dollars making terrible business mistakes that destroyed the value of their companies. And better yet, the government bailed out their companies, while the executives kept all the money they made from making the decisions that destroyed their companies, and they got some nice bonuses to boot. And why not? The government could always borrow so much money, it really didn’t matter. Why hold anyone accountable when we’re all in this party together, right?

And let’s not forget all the great Internet companies whose values kept going up, up, up, even though their revenues and profits did not. We knew they were worth a lot of money because sooner or later some other company was bound to buy them at massively overvalued prices. And why should the acquiring company ...