Everyone correctly predicted the "New Economy" would change business forever, about 10 years early. Venture capitalists frantically rushed to fund ".com" ideas

Everyone correctly predicted the "New Economy" would change business forever, about 10 years early. Venture capitalists frantically rushed to fund ".com" ideas with billions of collective dollars. To get their money back, the VCs hired investment banks to sell their shares to the public. Those same investment banks had for many years made "buy/sell/hold" recommendations reliably on established companies. Thus, when those investment banks inevitably gave the same .com's they were selling "buy" ratings, the public trusted those ratings. The public was also overcome with daily reports of the hyperbolic growth in the value of these public stocks. These reports fueled the interest in such stocks which caused investors to drive the prices for the stocks higher in a vicious cycle. However, despite such growth in the price of the stocks, and the "buy" recommendations of the investment banks, many of the stocks had business models that could not even theoretically operate at a profit. No matter how many widgets they sold, they lost more money. Another group of these businesses were aimed at providing services TO the "New Economy", ".com" companies. Eventually, the money from these funding rounds dried up. One-by-one the flawed business models were revealed, and companies began to go bankrupt. As businesses with even viable models relied heavily on the "New Economy" .com's as a customer base, they, too were driven to bankruptcy. Some period after the stocks were sold to the public, investment banks were also allowed to change their ratings, and often did, to "sell". News reports of the ".com" crash began, and sent the public running for the exits. All of these factors combined for another vicious cycle in the value of ".com" stocks in the opposite direction.