There are a lot of hope-and-dream companies sucking up tons of money but generating no profits, with no prospect of doing so in the foreseeable future. The profitless prosperity sector is headed for trouble. From Adventures in Capitalism at adventuresincapitalism.com:
Near the culmination of all great stock market bubbles, at least one of that cycle’s supposed luminaries suffers an epic collapse because of fraud. As a result, fresh capital is restricted from that sector when it is needed most, leading to further crisis and a winnowing out of the sector as competitors cannot raise additional capital. Remember; suckers are always willing to finance bad businesses, but fraud means you immediately sell. It is this fear of endemic fraud tarnishing a whole sector, not economics, that finally ends a bubble.
Following Enron; capital was restricted from pipelines and energy trading. The collapses of WorldCom and Qwest led to a slow-down in fiber-optic buildouts. After the collapses of Ivar Kreuger and Samuel Insull, there was a multi-decade decline in conglomerates and holding companies. Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, there was a multi-year dearth in underwriting archaic structured products and I’m sure the collapse of Madoff led to a decline in Ponzi investing. There are always second order effects in the sectors where these companies were previously shining lights—along with a lot of carnage. As a rule; if the biggest players were cheating a lot, even the honest guys were cheating a little. With Tesla (TSLAQ – USA) beginning its death rattle it’s worth considering what will happen to the rest of the Profitless Prosperity Sector.
