Ah, bubbles.
Tiny bubbles.
Big bubbles.
We sure love our bubbles.
The housing bubble
The debt bubble
The China bubble
The stock bubble
The oil bubble
The rice bubble
The Pound and Euro bubble
And many, many more.
But, since this epic financial collapse and wealth destruction event has destroyed pretty much every bubble, are there any bubbles left? Or any bubbles that were created by the destruction of other bubbles?
Here's some candidates:
The US Dollar bubble
The US Bond bubble
The Yen bubble
And some things that might become bubbles soon:
The Green Energy Stock bubble
The Gold Bubble
The Housing Bubble (could there be a double bubble?)
There you go, some ideas for starters. Have at it. Find the next bubble.
Posts
23 comments:
The bond bubble is too easy to even mention. For something playable tot he up side, I like the green energy bubble. Especially if the stimulus passes.
If gold at $900 and change is in a bubble, what do you think would be a fair price per ounce? $400? $200?
I've only been peripherally following the Michael Shedlock vs. Peter Schiff brouhaha, but I guess their opinions on gold are at least part of their issues with each other?
I refrained from commenting earlier on this energy issue, coz everybody seemed to be gung-ho on so-called energy independence and green energy. Well! Forgive me for breaking the bad news to you: There has been, there is, and there will be no energy independence, ever, until the day the world runs out of oil! As long as there's oil, and as long as the oil cartel is able to flood the market—at will-- with cheap oil, the world, including the USA, will continue to want oil as its main source of energy.
In the past 35 years, no stone was left unturned in America, Europe, China and Japan looking for alternatives. The results speak for themselves--there isn't a single source of energy formidable enough to replace oil or even lessen world's dependence on it.
Green energy is a joke, a fad that is used by politicians to placate the sheeple. Obama is stretching the limits of this fad because it sits well with his plans to create jobs, but beyond creating a few thousand jobs for a few years, it does nothing in changing US reliance on foreign oil. Therefore, I think green energy is the biggest bubble that is being inflated right now before our eyes. This new bubble, like any other bubble, will ultimately burst. But by then, Obama would have handed his bursting bubble to the next Repub President-elect. AND THE CYCLE WILL CONTINUE ON AND OFF: BUBBLE AND BUBBLE BURST, BUBBLE AND BUBBLE BURST…
Until Americans wake up, take to the streets, and demand that all lobbyists be thrown out of DC immediately, there is no hope for any real change. Lobbyists are running the country—not our elected officials.
Special interest groups spent $3.2 Billion in 08 on lobbying, a 13.7 percent increase from 2007, in spite of the economic downturn. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found that interest groups spent $17.4 million on lobbying for every day Congress was in session in 2008, or $32,523 per legislator per day.
http://tinyurl.com/al2vfl
In any third-world country, they call that corruption. In the US we give it a fancy name: Lobbying—just like Green Energy, AKA the First Emission-free Bubble in the World!!
The newsprint bubble. Ever since moveable print was invented there has been a bubble in terms of newspapers. Now, people can get their news from the internet. Goodbye newspapers. My own local newspaper has become a news pamphlet. It will soon become a news sheet. Then it will become a mere card telling you the name of its website and recommending that you go there for your news.
The American Century bubble. America got an extra 7 years out of this bubble. But now its pop. Its just that my fellow Americans haven't come to terms with it yet.
The gold bubble. People will realize that gold has no value outside of being good for decorations and jewelry. The human fetish about gold will be recognized as a mere fetish and its value will permanently decline.
Anti-Smoot-Hawley Act bubble. American idiot economists will have their brains pop when they realize that there are worse things other than protectionism--such as standing by while China and India destroys your manufacturing base industry by industry. Just last week in my state we lost two large manufacturing plants to China. Please American economists tell me again why this is good. And by the way, we're still waiting for all of those brandy-new replacement jobs.
I think there is a "green" bubble and a university education bubble. I teach natural resources and there are way too many students in my classes that should not be in college. Half of the class has less than a 2.0 GPA and most of them can barely write a technical report. Cheap student loans and parents with money have flooded universities with people who should really be doing better things with their lives. The influx of students have allowed universities to increase tuition at significantly higher rates than inflation.
Maybe there is pressure from below since so many jobs that require less education have been filled by cheap labor from other countries, either through outsourcing or immigration. This could explain why so many are giving university a try. Sadly, I run a class that demands college-level work and many of the students cannot understand why I expect them to be able to perform on the same level any employer would demand.
Higher Education.
Debt fueled, fundamentals ignored.
No, I think there are no more bubbles left. Except the very last bubble- the U.S. Treasury Bond Bubble. Oh boy, when it bursts, it will be bad. Interest rates will sky rocket.
Then, and finally then, it will sink in that the government can not bail out everyone. Right now, the U.S. government pretty much has a blank check to do whatever they please because idiots are more than willing (even getting a negative yield at one time?) to hand over their hard earned money.
But when foreigners have decided ENOUGH, then the U.S. Bond Bubble will burst, prices will come crashing down and yield will sky rocket.
Oh, BTW, I think in terms of this recession, I think we are in the bottom of the 2nd inning! This sucker is just getting started!
Don't forget the bubble that no-one knows about, the Off-Balance Sheet Exposure bubble.
Could be as much as 11 trillion $ if you go to Mish's global economic blog, you'll see.
Off-Balance Sheet Exposure is what "got" the Enron boys, and the last administration did nothing about it and the regulations were delayed a year last july to change the requirements.
Supposedly citi has 1.1 trillion alone and I'm really beginning to doubt the stimulus or the bailout can do anything much unless the economy comes roaring-back, like yesterday!
So the big-O is going to stimulate the economy with democrat pork 'n kickbacks, I'm sorta-a-no-body, but it looks like the ship is seriously taking-on water and is sinking fast.
This sucker's going DOWN!
Went2puke
You are correct that there is nothing that can directly replace oil soon. That was not the point of the posts on stimulus going to cheap and or green energy.
The point is...if we are going to throw money at something to put people to work we need to make sure there is a pay off in the future.
For example, if we build nuke plants co-generating electricity and hydrogen we get long term cheap electricity and we get started on hydrogen. More important is we can stop burning crazy amounts of natural gas in electrical generation. Natural gas needs to be used in cars were it is cheap and burns clean. That DIRECTLY cuts our dependence on oil.
Hopefully cheap, available electricity will help kick start a new American manufacturing boom too. Right now its so expensive it chokes off growth.
GT Charlie
mmmmmm, tbill bubble.
TBT up again today.
DEC 2008
"Are the any bubbles left?"
AAPL.
.
Common sense bubble
Nah
that burst years ago
.
"Sadly, I run a class that demands college-level work and many of the students cannot understand why I expect them to be able to perform on the same level any employer would demand."
Yeah, but nowadays, white collar work is really little more than a secretary (plus). All and all, a college education is little more than an HR hurdle than anything having to do with the work, itself. Think about it, there are seniors at a company, with 5-8 years experience, doing the knowledge/experienced work while others below them are MS Word/Powerpoint assistants. Does that even require a State U $60K education, nevermind a $160K private one (not including room/board)? And with the current pace of the layoffs out there, the experienced professionals aren't going to be mentoring anyone; it's every man or alumni society for oneself.
You see, the education bubble is the last thing America has going for itself. On top of locals not bothering, what about international students? If students around the globe stop seeing the Univ of Michigan, Cornell, Penn, Purdue, etc, as places to attend, then we essentially have no product and even no research machine, since graduate students/postdocs make up a vast portion of the research assistants at universities.
Anon said:
"The point is...if we are going to throw money at something to put people to work we need to make sure there is a pay off in the future."
Agree. It's a long term goal and it should be understood as such.
Cheers!
There's a huge politician-tax-fraud bubble.
I think there's a great deal of money to be found between back taxes, interest and penalties.
Based on what we've seen so far, I think every politican should be audited. Now, that would be a great reality show. I'd even put it up against Dancing with the Stars!!!
Any politician caught cheating gets a pig tattooed on their forehead.
Credit Cards. She's gonna blow.
1. T-bills, so TBT is a good idea
2. Gold hype and its not even $1k
3. Yen will continue up for now
4. real-estate still a bubble in NYC
pension bubble.
tick, tick, tick, when it pops, it'll be big.
When the China bubble bursts, it's going to be scary!
Bubbles left:
Reality show bubble
American Idol bubble
College tuition bubble
Personal finance blog bubble
Bubbles yet to inflate:
Freelancer sex trade bubble
Man by the comments here, the crowd here isn't as sharp as HPer's used to be.
For those who don't know, gold is not yet in a bubble. Bubble is when it gets to $2k-$4k although somethin in the low thousands might be fair value. When people start to lose faith in the US's ability to pay back their debt, the rush to gold will be immense and quick.
For the monkey who said that people will wake up and realize gold is only good for jewelry, etc, then you are talking about a "bubble" that has lasted thousands of years. That's not about to happen.
Similarly, the US could be oil independent via crude from algae grown out in the desert for about $500B, costing @$2 per gallon and a net zero emission in a small area of the nevada desert that no on would ever miss. I've been to VC conferences on renewable energy. There's plenty of renewable out there, just no political will and plenty of oil lobbyists.
yeah...nothing inspires more confidence in me than the concept that if one has a problem one should call a schoolboy to fix it.......................
Next bubble is "green technology" via all the global warming hysteria based on junk science pushed by lying lunatics like Al Gore, democrats using it for political gains, and easily duped liberals.
Billions of tax payer and private investor funds will be sunk into all kinds of pie in the sky smoke and mirrors inventions and studies that promise to save the planet and end up doing nothing. Some of them will even do the oppposite and screw up the environment even more. Like the ethonol boondoggle.
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