But the difference now is the phenomenal sums involved as London has emerged as a playground for Russian oligarchs, Chinese moguls and gulf sheiks.
Silicon Valley itself is a physical area as well as an ideology, and the phenomenal sums of money that have accumulated there have made life worse for those not at the top of the heap; housing becomes unaffordable, public transport and schooling are neglected; the city becomes a playground for the few and not the many.
They, too, expanded, merged, raided, and, most notably, drew in phenomenal sums of money.
In other words: society pays a certain form of analysts phenomenal sums of money for systematically failing to predict the events that impact our lives most deeply: just think about the attack on Peal Harbor; the Yom Kippur War in 1973; 9/11; about the prediction that Iraq would democratize easily after the US invasion; or the financial meltdown in 2008.
It is a role he has occupied ever since, fueling his phenomenal longevity and relevance, summed up in his recent Tony Award-winning show Springsteen on Broadway.
Jeremy Lee, who was his head chef at the Blueprint Cafe, next to the Design Museum for more than 15 years, sums up his "phenomenal" influence best when he says: "Terence put great food on a good table in a beautiful room".
Obama has shown a phenomenal ability to raise funds, often in small sums, via individuals giving $10 or $15 a time online.
Relief on contributions, national insurance, tax-exempt lump sums and others amounts to a phenomenal £48.4bn a year.
"If you look at the spectrum of publishing from those vanity publishers who take vast sums from writers and offer nothing in return, through to novelists getting phenomenal advances, the royalty offered here is reasonable," he said.
