Monday, July 14, 2008

Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In

HT: The Big Picture:
A panel of top business leaders testified before Congress about the worsening recession Monday, demanding the government provide Americans with a new irresponsible and largely illusory economic bubble in which to invest.

"What America needs right now is not more talk and long-term strategy, but a concrete way to create more imaginary wealth in the very immediate future," said Thomas Jenkins, CFO of the Boston-area Jenkins Financial Group, a bubble-based investment firm. "We are in a crisis, and that crisis demands an unviable short-term solution.">>>MORE

The Next Bubble?

...Current bubbles being considered include the handheld electronics bubble, the undersea-mining-rights bubble, and the decorative office-plant bubble. Additional options include speculative trading in fairy dust—which lobbyists point out has the advantage of being an entirely imaginary commodity to begin with—and a bubble based around a hypothetical, to-be-determined product called "widgets."

The most support thus far has gone toward the so-called paper bubble. In this appealing scenario, various privately issued pieces of paper, backed by government tax incentives but entirely worthless, would temporarily be given grossly inflated artificial values and sold to unsuspecting stockholders by greedy and unscrupulous entrepreneurs....[Hmmm...-ed]

We've told you where to go bubble hunting (This is worth reading):

Psst: Do You Want to Know the Future of Renewable Energy Investing?


UPDATE: See *link below for our thoughts on where we are in the cycle.

On January 17, we put up this post:
As One Economic Bubble Bursts, Another Takes Hold

From the Wall Street Journal's Informed Reader blog:

The next bubble in the U.S. economy should be taking hold right about now, entrepreneur and investor Eric Janszen writes in Harper’s Magazine....

And got a chance to reprise

"Humble Pie" (The Day the Nasdaq Died)

A long, long week ago
I can still remember how the market used to make me smile
What I'd do when I had the chance
Is get myself a cash advance
And add another tech stock to the pile.

But Alan Greenspan made me shiver
With every speech that he delivered
Bad news on the rate front
Still I'd take one more punt

I can't remember if I cried
When I heard about the CPI
I lost my fortune and my pride
The day the NASDAQ died

MORE, including the rest of the song and actual analysis!