The Valley's latest extreme sport is feigning nonchalance about the economy. Living in an earthquake zone requires developing a habit of stoic flinchiness. The economy's seismic shifts are slower, but just as unpredictable; all one can do it shrug one's shoulders, stock the emergency kit, and keep on living. "We're watching the economy crater all around us, but ... well, we're not really seeing any direct impact," writes Tech Ticker anchor Sarah Lacy. "Making things more uneasy for those here in 2000: We didn't cause this one." Lacy's right to reach back in history for examples, but her timing is off. This is 1998 all over again.The Asian financial crisis had roiled markets for a year, much as the credit crunch has done. Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund, required an elaborate Wall Street rescue, backed by the Federal Reserve, foreshadowing Bear Stearns. All this happened, mind you, while Mark Zuckerberg was still in junior high. In the Valley, meanwhile, the first Internet boom was just starting to unfold. Towards the end of the year, Henry Blodget, then a Wall Street stock analyst, set a $400 target for Amazon.com shares. The talk of market-watchers was how the technology-heavy Nasdaq index had uncoupled itself from the gyrations of the Dow. But surely it would come to an end, right? Then as now, that was the question on everyone's mind. It did end, but not in 1998, and not in 1999. The Valley's Teflon economy just raised expectations further, contributing to the wildness of the boom and the harshness of the bust, which unfolded in wearying slow motion from the Nasdaq peak in March 2000. The buoyancy of technology in the '90s only served to sink us, come the new millennium. That's where I think we are: Not 2000, but 1998. In the lull before the storm, the wild upward ride before the crash. A tech recession now might actually be healthy, since so many are braced for it. Strategy Analytics reports that the second quarter was the slowest rate of growth for digital media in two years, since the research firm started tracking its index of online-advertising and e-commerce revenues. Ad-dependent companies are preparing themselves accordingly. Marc Andreessen talked about an economic "nuclear winter" before his social-network startup, Ning, raised $60 million; similar fears, if less bluntly voiced, drove Slide CEO Max Levchin to add $50 million to his startup's stash earlier this year. The risk of all these companies adding to their stock of dry powder is that, in the absence of a deep downturn, the Valley's leaders will be tempted to light it up. The lack of big exits is driving venture capitalists crazy; they want to hand their charges off to greater fools, so they can get back to hunting for the next plausibly big thing. Companies spending for spending's sake, to form the appearance of turbocharged growth and make companies look like IPO material, could return us to the bad old days of 2000. That, I think, is why so many here are secretly rooting for a downturn. They want to get it over with, before things get really wild. "The Great Web Wipeout," a work of speculative satire published by Wired in 1996, makes for instructive readings. The names will mean nothing to today's readers. But substitute "Twitter" for "Starwave," update Stewart Alsop's title from "computer columnist" to "venture capitalist," and you've more or less got a contemporary piece. Underlying the Valley's blue-skies optimism: The fear that the heavens are soon to open up with rain.