WSJ:

Oil soared to a record Thursday and appeared to have further to climb as supply concerns and fears of a blow-up with Iran intensified…Crude-oil futures hit $145.85 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange during intraday trading Thursday…Western oil-company executives acknowledged oil wasn’t currently in short supply, but might be in the future.

Every day oil goes up on exactly the same non-news. Every day, demand is falling in the beleaguered West and being curtailed in the developing world. Where have we seen this all before where hype feeds on hype and everyone seems to believe their own press clippings?

Ah yes. On December 28, 1999, Qualcomm’s shares jumped 30% in a day when a Paine Webber analyst declared a $1000 price target. They continued up for a few months more, as the giddy, unstoppable NASDAQ climbed to 5000. Then something happened — and things were never quite the same for Qualcomm, and many other companies. But then again, maybe this time, for the very first time, it’s different and we just don’t understand how different it is. Maybe.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 1:22 am and is filed under business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.