evidence: However, in the 1990s we began to test our luck, not to mention that of the countries we told to follow our example, and we continue to test that luck. We have put ourselves deep in debt, not to finance productive investments but, rather, to finance wasteful projects: in the 1980s empty office buildings; in the 1990s fiber-optic systems that will not see light for years, and software that has interfered with business productivity rather than enhancing it; today a tax cut that disproportionately benefits the rich, fueling a consumption extravaganza that, though it may have prevented a greater slowdown, has not provided the foundations for future economic growth. It is still not clear how much of the private so-called investment of the 1990s was sheer waste; but even if we consider that only a fraction of the erosion in stock values is attributable to bad investments, the figure must be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.