The other thing I recall tying those two periods together was enthusiasts saying, in the face of an obvious bubble, "Well, things are different this time."
My glib summation of those two events:
- Dotcom boom deregulated (in the social and technological sense as much as the legal) investing (e.g. the rise of day-trading).
This is a great example of 1 of the 2 fundamental biases Kahneman identifies in Thinking Fast and Slow: answering a difficult question by replacing it with a simpler one.
The other one (also perhaps relevant to the general topic of this thread): WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is).
My glib summation of those two events:
- Dotcom boom deregulated (in the social and technological sense as much as the legal) investing (e.g. the rise of day-trading).
- 2000s housing bubble (pre-GFC) deregulated home-buying (subprime adjustable-rate mortgages).
Perhaps our parting assessment of the ZIRP era will be it cut to the chase and deregulated gambling.