Now, the baby-boom-top-heavy, Social-Security Ponzi pyramid is beginning to invert and tip over.
During the tech boom, top-selling domains were based on brand appeal.
Novellus Systems, Motorola Solutions and Advanced Micro Devices all make the top 25, reflecting the ongoing boom in chip stocks and mobile technology.
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Instead, four of the top five slots were occupied by people who made their money from the mining boom - Ivan Glasenberg, Andrew Forrest, Clive Palmer, and, at the very top, Gina Rinehart, Australia's first lady of iron ore.
That often involves getting clients to invest in fashionable sectors at the top of the market (think back to the dotcom boom).
Emboldened by habaneros and firewater, head to the Standard Hotel's (848 Washington Street, www.standardhotels.com) late-night club of the moment, Top of the Standard (although everyone still calls it the Boom Boom Room).
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As we recovered, we returned to greater sharing, and in the economic boom times of the 50s and 60s, the top 1% of the nation were receiving only around 10% of the income.
The real-estate boom has also increased the gap between those at the top and those who keep the offices clean and the entrepreneurs fed.
Merrill Lynch set great store on coming top of the league tables for structuring collateralised-debt obligations during the boom years.
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Fannie Mae has burst into the top 30, an obvious beneficiary of low interest rates and the refinancing boom in home mortgages.
But Oshkosh made the same kind of mistake that many other well-run companies made at the height of the sub-prime housing boom, buying deep into the construction equipment sector at the top of the market and then suffering a staggering collapse in demand that impaired its capacity to meet debt obligations.
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Among other things Germany's top central banker wants to avoid a home replay of the credit and property boom whose excesses have been so harmful in Spain.
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First came the boom in mergers (which inevitably throw one of the merging companies' bosses out of the top chair).
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