Factors Aligning Against the Boom Cycle

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All too often the demarcation between fantasy and reality is blurred by a new vision of utopia that enters the financial psyche, as it did in the euphoria of the late 1990s. During that period, the renewed prospects of a new paradigm (a sustained economic boom characterized by the absence of cyclicality) fueled an era of uberspeculation and sky-high price earning multiples.

This notion of a transforming period of economic prosperity was popularized in July 1997 in Wired Magazine's cover story: "The Long Boom".

Authors Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden wrote: "We're facing 25 years of prosperity, freedom and a better environment for the whole world. You got a problem with that?"...