Bubbles
Each Human Epoc has its defining symbols. For example, the first century AD was all about the Roman Eagle spreading itself across the known world. Most of the Middle Ages, well we have the Cross and the Crecent, Christian and Muslim. 3000 B.C., think Pyramads, early 20th century, Hammer and Sickle, Swastikia, American Eagle.
The 60's, tiedye, beads and bongs.
For the twenty-first century of the Common Era (or in the Year of Our Lord, for you traditionalists)I propose the Bubble.
Yes folks, the bubble. It blows way up, causes the kids to oooh and ahhhh, sparkles in the sunshine with subtile liquid colors, oily rainbows to delight the senses. It floats above us, inspiring us.
Then it pops, evaporates, as if it were never there, except for maybe a drop of soapy water on the ground.
This century began with a Huge Bubble in the Stock market, the kind that never will end and always will increase, except it doesn't, and as it pops the last to join are sucked into the vacumm left behind, lives and fortunes disappering overnight like dreams dying in the cold dawn.
We are currently riding the Great Real Estate Bubble, pumped to dizzing size by easy credit, relentless hype, greedy middlemen and the ever present heard mentality that causes all of us to forget what we learned in the last bubble. At some point it too will pop and a new generation of people will learn the hard way that a three bedroom shack is still a shack, regardless of the price tag. I used to wonder with all the million dollar homes, how can there be that many millionaires in the country. There aren't, just a lot of money chasing investment, some pretty "creative" financing and an interest rate environment that is driving one bubble to mitigate the effects of the last bubble popping.
When that one goes it's going to be painfull, people. Don't say it cannot happen, Japan has been in one for the past ten years.
Bubbles, the symbol of the 21st century. There is a guy over at UCLA that predicts accelerated economic growth to resume by the end of the decade, to corespond with accelerated population growth that will reach an unsustainable peak some time around 2050, plus or minus. Really, he calculated it baised on models derived from Stock market bubble behavior of the past two centuries and corelated it to non linear behavior in animal populations and earthquake ruptures.
According to this prognosticator, the bubble that he is predicting is the end bubble of at least 5000 years of population growth and at least two centuries of Recorded world GDP, of which the last bubble ( and in fact all other bubbles) can be explained as a predicted osciliation in the larger overall trend to the BIG BUBBLE.
Now, he will not say what will happen on this date, only that the date exists, and that on that year plus or minus, somthing VERY BIG will occur. It may suck, or it may be great.
Murphy's law, however, tells me that for most of us, it will suck.
One other factoid of this guy's theory, as you get close to a bubble (and its predictible crash) the log of the indicies (GDP, stock price, opulation) is decorated with a periodicity, it goes up and down around the central increasing trend, with an increasing frequency.
In layman's terms, as things get close to the crash, volitility goes up, one day the market is up, one day down, with wider and wilder swings, until the big one hits.
Or in other words, he expects more and bigger bubbles and crashes as we continue to see increasing growth in population and GDP.
Till 2050, when the "transition event" occurs.
He says a lot more, way beyond the scope of this little blog.
I find this both frightening and facinating. Rumors and predictions of the apocalypse have been with us for millennia in all cultures. Krazelic, Raganok, Armegeddon, the typhoon battle at the end of time. For the most part, thinking people ignore bearded unwashed nuts as they prattle on, clothed in cardboard signs, about the coming end of time.
Yet, I believe in bubbles. I have lived through at least three of them, and have seen the impact.
And now the bearded nut with the sign is no longer a bearded nut, but a very accomplished mathematician and geophysicist with a lot of graphs and numbers and what seems to be a way to predict stock market bubbles.
And he is pointing to a blip on a graph that might just be the end of time.
D. Sornette, look him up.
The 60's, tiedye, beads and bongs.
For the twenty-first century of the Common Era (or in the Year of Our Lord, for you traditionalists)I propose the Bubble.
Yes folks, the bubble. It blows way up, causes the kids to oooh and ahhhh, sparkles in the sunshine with subtile liquid colors, oily rainbows to delight the senses. It floats above us, inspiring us.
Then it pops, evaporates, as if it were never there, except for maybe a drop of soapy water on the ground.
This century began with a Huge Bubble in the Stock market, the kind that never will end and always will increase, except it doesn't, and as it pops the last to join are sucked into the vacumm left behind, lives and fortunes disappering overnight like dreams dying in the cold dawn.
We are currently riding the Great Real Estate Bubble, pumped to dizzing size by easy credit, relentless hype, greedy middlemen and the ever present heard mentality that causes all of us to forget what we learned in the last bubble. At some point it too will pop and a new generation of people will learn the hard way that a three bedroom shack is still a shack, regardless of the price tag. I used to wonder with all the million dollar homes, how can there be that many millionaires in the country. There aren't, just a lot of money chasing investment, some pretty "creative" financing and an interest rate environment that is driving one bubble to mitigate the effects of the last bubble popping.
When that one goes it's going to be painfull, people. Don't say it cannot happen, Japan has been in one for the past ten years.
Bubbles, the symbol of the 21st century. There is a guy over at UCLA that predicts accelerated economic growth to resume by the end of the decade, to corespond with accelerated population growth that will reach an unsustainable peak some time around 2050, plus or minus. Really, he calculated it baised on models derived from Stock market bubble behavior of the past two centuries and corelated it to non linear behavior in animal populations and earthquake ruptures.
According to this prognosticator, the bubble that he is predicting is the end bubble of at least 5000 years of population growth and at least two centuries of Recorded world GDP, of which the last bubble ( and in fact all other bubbles) can be explained as a predicted osciliation in the larger overall trend to the BIG BUBBLE.
Now, he will not say what will happen on this date, only that the date exists, and that on that year plus or minus, somthing VERY BIG will occur. It may suck, or it may be great.
Murphy's law, however, tells me that for most of us, it will suck.
One other factoid of this guy's theory, as you get close to a bubble (and its predictible crash) the log of the indicies (GDP, stock price, opulation) is decorated with a periodicity, it goes up and down around the central increasing trend, with an increasing frequency.
In layman's terms, as things get close to the crash, volitility goes up, one day the market is up, one day down, with wider and wilder swings, until the big one hits.
Or in other words, he expects more and bigger bubbles and crashes as we continue to see increasing growth in population and GDP.
Till 2050, when the "transition event" occurs.
He says a lot more, way beyond the scope of this little blog.
I find this both frightening and facinating. Rumors and predictions of the apocalypse have been with us for millennia in all cultures. Krazelic, Raganok, Armegeddon, the typhoon battle at the end of time. For the most part, thinking people ignore bearded unwashed nuts as they prattle on, clothed in cardboard signs, about the coming end of time.
Yet, I believe in bubbles. I have lived through at least three of them, and have seen the impact.
And now the bearded nut with the sign is no longer a bearded nut, but a very accomplished mathematician and geophysicist with a lot of graphs and numbers and what seems to be a way to predict stock market bubbles.
And he is pointing to a blip on a graph that might just be the end of time.
D. Sornette, look him up.
posted by Maurice_Basilius at 1:41 PM
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