Analysis Note: The Fall of Innovative Hot Spots: Silicon Valley and Route 128

With the state in Massachusetts in debt, rising taxes, plummeting housing prices, rising unemployment and a recession, complete with bank failures, company closings and bankruptcies, the Miracle, on which its former Governor Dukakis hoped to enter the White House, has become more of a Massachusetts Black Hole. Like most events, its collapse were a result of its apparently great successes. The collapse, which began in 1989 and was readily apparent by 1990, was in fact predestined by a peak which had occurred in the early 1980s. Small events through the middle of the decade also gave plenty of warning to observant watchers.