One of Greenberg’s founding partners admitted that the company was spending money like a “drunken sailor.” The firm’s excesses were poorly timed. The semiconductor industry had always been ferociously cyclical, with the industry skyrocketing upward when demand was strong, and slumping back when it was not. It didn’t take a rocket scientist—and GCA had a handful on staff—to figure out that after the boom of the early 1980s, a downturn would eventually follow. Greenberg chose not to listen.
