Are we having fun yet?
Overblown
by Noam Scheiber
Deflation isn’t a big danger to the U.S. economy.
But the Fed’s policies designed to stop it may be.
More than 300 companies that issued initial public stock offerings during the Internet bubble — including 93 in Silicon Valley — tentatively agreed to a $1 billion settlement Thursday with investors who claim they artificially inflated the value of their stock-market debuts and demand for them as well. Among the companies included in the settlement: Ariba, Global Crossing, Transmeta, Red Hat, MP3.com and TheGlobe.com. The settlement is obviously great news for those of us who lost money during the Internet boom. “I’ve got a stupid grin on my face,” said Paulina Borsook, author of “Cyberselfish,” a book about Silicon Valley culture, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s like we’re living in a novel where there’s a happy outcome and justice is served. The money is getting transferred back to the people it was looted from. If nothing else, it replenishes some of those pension funds of normal middle-class people that got screwed by this.”
