The advertisement was from a company called Pets.com, founded just two years before in 1998 at the height of the dot-com bubble.

Pets.com went public on the NASDAQ just weeks after the Superbowl with the symbol IPET.

And just 270 days later it was out of business, its stock price having fallen from $11 to just 19 cents in the interim.

The autopsy showed that Pets.com was selling its products at nearly 30% below cost, giving rise to the old mystifying dot-com logic, "We lose money on every sale but make up for it in volume."

Granted, Pets.com did not have the benefit of a printing press, monopoly over the money supply, or worldwide intransigence in the existing financial system, so they couldn't kick the can down the road too far.

But it remains yet another hallmark of one of the most important lessons in financial history: sooner or later, bubbles correct.

hat goes especially for our current bond and debt bubble, for which Elliott Management's Paul Singer succinctly projects:

"The ultimate breakdown (or series of breakdowns) from this environment is likely to be surprising, sudden, intense, and large."

By comparison, investors in Pets.com were being almost downright conservative when compared with today's bond investors.

At least early stage technology venture have the potential to generate eye-popping returns.