Seeing Things Upside Down

First up, here's the late 1990s. Note the happy expression. Things were looking very good for us!



Here's the dotcom crash. Things got turned upside down and it gave us quite a shock.



The government came to the rescue though and turned everthing right side up again using the power of the monetary printing press.



Just look how well the economy is doing now! Hurray!

You may note that the distortions in the picture were actually introduced during the dotcom crash and never really went away. As proof, simply look at the 2nd picture upside down. In other words, the problems didn't start with the 3rd picture. They started with the 2nd picture. Deep down, I think we all kind of know that though.

Source Data:
Thatcher effect

This post inspired by a comment left by dryfly ('perception') in Calcuated Risk: Citi: additional $8 billion to $11 billion in writedowns.