The
party that never stops
By Michael Hulme
 Well
most of us have done it, woken up with a dry mouth,
rising temperature and thick head. Even worse is trying
to remember, or wishing you couldn’t remember,
what you did and why. Some of us take our remedies
and move on. Occasionally we may say never again,
although for most this is just empty rhetoric: very
rarely do we mean it and even more rarely does it
mark some life changing moment. Such is the manner
in which many commentators have chosen to mark the
passing of the dotcom boom and bust - as some form
of strange Bacchic party from which, with thick heads,
we emerged as ‘older and wiser’ and of
course far more responsible.
But just suppose for one minute that the party wasn’t
the dotcom ball, and rather just one of a number of
cocktails, albeit a particularly potent example. The
party turns out to be larger and even more intoxicating
than we thought. So whose party have we been too and
just what else have we been drinking to get such an
almighty headache?
I’m not sure what to call this party, perhaps
the ‘Get Rich Easy and Quick Party’ or
‘The Never Ending Boom Story’ or even
perhaps ‘The Alchemists Image Ball’. The
guest list would be extensive including amongst its
number Miss Paper Millionaire, Mr Image Savvy, Mr
Corporate Goliath and his assistants Mr A. Number-Bender
and Mrs P.R. Anything. We might imagine in a corner
sitting at the feet of Mr Celebrity Entrepreneur were
Miss Fortune Dreaming, her partner Mr I.D. Dressdown
and their friend Mr Golden Options. Picking expensively
at any tasty morsels were the twins Mr Ready Capital
and Mr Analyst Smug, joined, seemingly inseparably
with Mrs I.P.O Floating and Mr Sharp Contract. A sorry
and bloated sight was Mr A. Consultant who spent much
of the evening talking with Mr Merry G.O. Round-Payoff.
I am not at all sure that all these people were allowed
in but the guys on the door, Gov. Reg Ulator and T.
Blindeye were so busy dancing themselves they hardly
seemed to notice. Anyway a mighty fine time was had
by all. The conversation was electric Miss Fortune
Dreaming was telling us about something that went
from zero to sixty million in six seconds, or was
that six months, come to think about it I’m
not sure now whether she meant her company expensed
Porsche or the company she thought she might think
about setting up tomorrow. Whatever, Mr Corporate
Goliath was pretty confident his assistant Mr Number-Bender
could come up with a really super balance sheet and
plenty of profit and she didn’t even need to
bother about trading, after all he’d never let
a little thing like trading stand between himself
and a hefty profit, not to mention a bonus.
It was all so exciting: so much money, so little
effort, so much advice. A new world order was being
created before my very eyes, companies to buy, options
to trade, and you could even buy licenses worth billions
for things that no one ever said they wanted or even
showed the slightest inclination to use. This was
grand strategy where winner pays for and takes all.
It was all just so intoxicating.
But then, well, it all got a little heady, a little
blurry, things got confusing, and what seemed so certain
became like riddles and code. In the morning things
didn’t look so good. Yes, it was a great party.
But do we want this hangover again?
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