The fall from grace of Amazon.com is good for the economy and, maybe, good for the company itself. No one can take away from Amazon its stunning achievement in virtually inventing the dot.com company and being its most spectacular success story (physically if not financially). In less than five years it has become the world's biggest bookshop and has been diversifying feverishly in order to become the world's one-stop shop for a wide range of consumer goods. But in doing so its shares flew too close to the sun and have now melted. They fell 19% on Friday making a 70% fall during the past six months. This is part of a much wider melt-down that has hit US and UK internet stocks generally.

This is good news for two reasons. First, it has brought a dose of realism into a crazy world in which investors seemed to think that net stocks were beyond the laws of gravity. They are not. They have to make profits, like others. Amazon's price soared ludicrously beyond reality considering it is losing money heavily in an environment in which price cutting is endemic. The company claims it has over $1bn in its coffers (the result of selling stock on the back of its overhyped share price). That may be so but it won't last long at the pace it has been leaking cash of late. And if Amazon is in this state, what about the rest?

The second reason is that the fall of the dot.coms hasn't brought down the rest of the economy with it. So far, that is (don't bet on it). Some economists had predicted a scare scenario in which the surge in hi-tech stocks (which provided the wealth to fuel America's consumer spending boom) would go into reverse thrust. People, suddenly feeling poorer because of falling stock markets, would stop spending, thereby propelling the economy into recession. Maybe the crash hasn't happened yet because of the spatchcock way in which the fall in technology shares occurred - up one day down the next, affecting different stocks in different ways and often offset by a rise in old economy stocks. People are at last realising that, for all their glamour, most dot.coms targeting consumers are just selling old economy goods in a different way - and with thousands of global competitors prepared to undercut them. There will eventually be an almighty shake-out from which only the super-fit will survive. Meanwhile, consumers should take advantage. Seldom has there been such a good time to shop.