You're neglecting the 1-2year lag effect of any government interference in the economy, baring the Fed itself, who's been the same since Reagan now.

Any law, budget, tax-cut etc takes 12 to 18months or so to actually ripple into the economy. If you wanted to blame the recession on anything, you need to look 12 to 18months before it happened.

Bush the Elder's recession for example was more likely 'caused' by Reagan and not his own adminstration.

The entire dot.com stockmarket was insanely overpriced, even for the companies that were making money. P/E ratios were well over 100, this is something that is totally unsustainable, no matter what happened. The only thing that could keep those ratios that high was a tripling or quadrupling of profits every year.

That bubble is a sign of why laymen should not invest without proper research. Everyone and their mother invested, even if they had no idea what they were doing. It was 'cool' and 'neat' to do, thus when the smallest bit of trouble happened, they fled like panicked animals.

This is why I invested in the depths of the dot.com bubble burst-hell, the best time since after the 70's era of stagflation to invest.