1.   At an extreme, markets suffer from what is known as tulip mania.

2.   Just as with tulip mania, the driving force was self-delusion, not criminality.

3.   Most financial writers, groping for historic precedents to explain the dot-com boom, cite foreign events, like the tulip mania and the South Sea Bubble.

4.   Now, the early stages of tulip mania are spreading over Hong Kong.

5.   The psychology driving investors has not changed much since the Dutch tulip mania more than three centuries ago.

6.   The tulip mania, he said, was the first recorded in history.

7.   Tulip mania has a history elsewhere.

8.   When tulip mania dies down, all that remains are pretty flowers.

9.   With many dot-coms blowing up, it is now fashionable to dismiss the Internet as just another tulip mania.