Reprocess of Bubble Nebula Data. NGC 7635, also called the Bubble Nebula, is an emission nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. It's created by stellar winds from a superhot star 40 times the size of our sun which whip the cloud of gas around the star into a bubble. [Via]
posted by homunculus on Sep 20, 2009 - 18 comments

"The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." [more inside]
posted by philip-random on Jul 6, 2009 - 76 comments

Finally, finally - Zubbles are available for pre-order! Inventor Tim Kehoe has been searching for the elusive colored bubble for a long time. Through his experimentation he's stained his eyes a deep blue, along with his car, his kitchen, and his bathtub (he's also permanently stained the family dog). But in 2005, after 11 years and over $500,000 in funding, Kehoe successfully created a colored bubble that wouldn't stain. His invention, Zubbles, was given the "Best of What's New, Grand Award" from Popular Science. [more inside]
posted by avoision on Jun 26, 2009 - 71 comments

Revisit the Beanie Baby Bubble with Les & Sue Fox's 1998 bestseller The Beanie Baby Handbook. [via]
posted by Horace Rumpole on May 15, 2009 - 55 comments

How Lehman Brothers Got Its Real Estate Fix. A great article in the NYTimes describes some of the details of commercial real estate lending in its heyday, with a focus on one of Lehman's biggest dealmakers.
posted by SeizeTheDay on May 3, 2009 - 7 comments

Dolphins at SeaWorld Orlando make and play with bubble rings. Others learn by watching. (SLYP) via [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan on Mar 18, 2009 - 17 comments

Jim the Realtor makes sardonic videos documenting his work . . . [more inside]
posted by troy on Feb 27, 2009 - 47 comments

Leaving office, President Bush claimed "that he took 'a deliberate and comprehensive approach' to preventing terrorism that combined military action overseas with strong defensive measures at home."

[As early as 2002] "We knew that the mortgage-brokerage industry was corrupt... Where we would have gotten a sense of what was really going on was the point where the mortgage was sold knowing that it was a piece of dung and it would be turned into a security. But the agents with the expertise had been diverted to counterterrorism."
[. . . . FBI Director Robert] "Mueller actually circumvented the Justice Department and the OMB to get resources. But he was shut down" by the [Bush A]dministration. [. . . . Testifying in October 2004, ] Chris Swecker, then assistant director of the criminal investigation division said ... "The potential impact of mortgage fraud on financial institutions in the stock market is clear. If fraudulent practices become systemic within the mortgage industry and mortgage fraud is allowed to become unrestrained, it will ultimately place financial institutions at risk and have adverse effects on the stock market."

posted by orthogonality on Jan 29, 2009 - 71 comments

Sunday Afternoon Flash Fun/Metafilter Convalescence Flash Fun: BubbleQuod. You have lived your entire life in a bubble. Now you want out. Burst your bubble.
posted by schyler523 on Jan 25, 2009 - 7 comments

Ladies And Gentlemen… Dow 25,000! A few years ago, some financial wizards thought the good times would go on and on and on. The mega-market could bring Dow 30,000 or Dow 36,000. Maybe the real estate boom will not bust.
posted by Yakuman on Jan 10, 2009 - 52 comments

History Repeats Itself in Different Hues -- a readable Q&A data dump comparing the economics and policy responses of 1990s Japan and current events
posted by troy on Dec 19, 2008 - 6 comments

Bill Moyers interviews George Soros on the financial crisis. Soros discusses market fundamentalism and the causes of the current crisis, as well as what can be done, and how this meltdown will change the global economy. (via The Big Picture) [more inside]
posted by [expletive deleted] on Oct 11, 2008 - 44 comments

There are still some smart people left on Wall St. Hedge fund manager, John Paulson, made a cool $15B for his fund as the housing market imploded. His cut? $3-4B. Not too shabby for a year's worth of work. [more inside]
posted by blahblah on Sep 26, 2008 - 45 comments

The Next Bubble: Priming the markets for tomorrow's big crash. A layman's primer on the genesis and future of today's economic troubles, at Harper's Magazine.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Mar 13, 2008 - 79 comments

The Subprime Primer. [via] An entertaining, lo-fi, comic-book style explanation of the complex Subprime Mortgage mess.
posted by afx114 on Feb 17, 2008 - 77 comments

"Here Comes Another Bubble" a very 2.0-savvy song parody with a 'catch all the in-jokes' video. [more inside]
posted by wendell on Dec 4, 2007 - 19 comments

Remember the Town Disney Built? -- 50% of the homes in Celebration, Florida are up for sale. A failure of corporate-owned and -planned Community™? or just a fallout of the bursting of the housing bubble? And whither New Urbanism? [more inside]
posted by amberglow on Oct 4, 2007 - 66 comments

Minsky Meltdown ahead? Named after Hyman Minsky, an economist who was known for his research concerning financial crises, specifically asset bubbles based on credit cycles. [much more inside]
posted by umop-apisdn on Aug 29, 2007 - 75 comments

Countrywide Empties Out on Widowmaker gives a vivid idea of the turmoil in the mortgage market, and the difficult American real estate environment. "You sold your unlimited subway card after the 5th race, plunged full-bore on a filthy hot dog, a beer and a 9-1 shot that finished next-to-last. You are Countrywide."
posted by Adamchik on Aug 16, 2007 - 42 comments

Bursting the Bubble - an alternate look at the life of the so-called "bubble boy" David Vetter.
posted by Burhanistan on Aug 2, 2007 - 38 comments

What's the link between:
1) the quickly-growing number of American homeowners becoming unable to pay their mortgages after their ARM's reset (a trend nicknamed "ARMageddon" -- applicable in the UK too), which is translating into soaring foreclosure rates, and in turn forcing at least 60 US semi-shady mortgage brokers to go belly-up in the past year (i.e. the "subprime meltdown"), and...
2) the recent implosion and impending financial bailout -- which may become the biggest since the Long Term Capital Management fiasco of 1998 -- of two Bear Stearns hedge funds which dealt in mortgage securities? [more inside]
posted by Asparagirl on Jul 11, 2007 - 123 comments

BubbleFilter: Real Estate Roller Coaster. [via] US Home prices adjusted for inflation plotted as a first-person ride on a roller coaster. Keep your eye on the bottom right-hand corner for the corresponding year. Don't worry about the dramatic ending. I mean really, how bad could bad get?
posted by afx114 on Apr 3, 2007 - 97 comments

Bubbleprice.com is the handy guide for Internet startup entrepreneurs to use to calculate their next investment round. If you've recently raised money for your startup, how do you plan to use it? If you're working for a startup, better hope Matt Marshall doesn't tag you with the dreaded bubble tag.
posted by gen on Jan 7, 2007 - 7 comments

The Decline of the PS3 Grey Market: Purchases by eBay arbitrageurs were one of the primary drivers of the Playstation 3 release date frenzy. Predictably, the bubble has now burst.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Dec 30, 2006 - 74 comments

If you continue to wait, you may never be able to afford to get into the housing market. The National Association of Home Builders wants you to buy a home now. Should you wait? No, no, no, no! Via Housing Panic.
posted by brain_drain on Dec 1, 2006 - 91 comments

The Specter of Recession in 2007. With the US housing bubble falling for the first time in over a decade, oil traders are dumping inventories (and driving down prices) in fear of a US-led global recession brought on by the end of the biggest housing bubble in history. Previous.
posted by stbalbach on Oct 4, 2006 - 40 comments

Donk, box, or bubble?
posted by mr_crash_davis on Aug 18, 2006 - 13 comments

I've become obsessed with the idea of the Real Estate Bubble. I don't even live in NYC or SF, but I must read Brownstoner, Curbed, and Curbed SF every day. For more local, but less spectacular, chills I read Urban Trekker. And for a more global view of the gloom: The Matrix, The Housing Bubble, and Bubble Meter. Finally, for one last depressing shot, America's Overvalued Real Estate tracks down the most depressingly overpriced "pieces of shit" across the country. Related discussions here, here, here, and (premature or prescient?) here.
posted by ereshkigal45 on Apr 3, 2006 - 87 comments

itulip.com has returned. Back in the go-go days when Internet stocks ruled the world, iTulip was one of a very few voices warning about the Nasdaq bubble and the likely fallout. (Prudent Bear was another.) As bad as things got, the overall financial bubble never really popped, it just shifted into debt and real estate after furious slashing of interest rates and money-printing by the Fed. Financial manias are terrible; their unraveling has been compared with economic nuclear weapons. (cf: The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble [amazon book link] and the Dutch Tulip Mania.) The only good solution to a bubble is not to have one in the first place. [more inside]
posted by Malor on Mar 15, 2006 - 13 comments

The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own
posted by Lanark on Jan 5, 2006 - 60 comments

Signs of a Bubble ? In a world where it makes sense for ebay to pay around $4 billion for (mostly free) internet phone service Skype, it's hard to not think that the old days of wild overvaluation are here again. Then again not everyone agrees.
posted by clevershark on Dec 7, 2005 - 25 comments

Mansions fit for a commoner "... moving into a bigger house was not something to be questioned, but something to be accepted, an axiom of American life."
posted by knave on Nov 28, 2005 - 86 comments

This might be the only time in your life you get to hear this because the finance industry survives soley on large-scale ignorance, so listen very closely. There is NO housing bubble in the US. NEVER invest in actively managed funds. Financial lamers do better than financial jocks (and almost everyone else). .

Sadly however most of you won't have the mathematical knowledge to differentiate the advice backed by several Nobel laureates and world-renowned academics from the "advice" of any of the thousands of horny little evangelists spruking their financial "theories" for profit or fame.
posted by DirtyCreature on Jun 20, 2005 - 78 comments

The Global Housing Price Bubble is bursting. Prices are already declining in Australia and Britain. The Economist has another story that outlines how a global bursting of this bubble could be deleterious to the world's economy. The bubble is bigger than the stock market bubble of the late 90s. Will there be a smooth landing or will spending collapse when it cannot be funded on housing price gains?
posted by sien on Jun 16, 2005 - 52 comments

How to detect a housing bubble. (Via Seeing the Forest.)
posted by alms on May 4, 2005 - 51 comments

I know this has been on everyone's mind, but I just read this article today and was astounded at my lack of foresight. Silly me, here I was worrying about global warming when what I need to be fretting about is the decrease in fuel's impact on the structure of international banking! Will we run out of fossil fuel before it's too late to save the environment from pollution and greenhouse gasses? The abiotic nuts think we've got plenty more. Personally, I think we can kiss the marvel that is suburbia goodbye and start contemplating the fact that the focus on the post-post industrial revolution will not be information, but rather agriculture. And since solar panels and windmills and the like are made of materials that are extracted, transported, and fashioned by using oil-powered machinery, my money's on the folks who're stockpiling uranium for all those shiny new nuclear plants we're going to need. So, do we have a plan? You bet we do! Oh. Well, we'll just rely on the advancement of technology to allow us to weasel out of it! Me? I've actually always wanted a horse.
posted by Specklet on Apr 14, 2005 - 67 comments

And you thought real bubble wrap was fun this digital bubble wrap never runs out and is 17% more awesometacular! Manic mode turns that fun knob way up past 11. Hot damn.
posted by Phlops on Jul 24, 2003 - 17 comments

Take Stock in Weblogs - Blogshares is a web-based simulation of stock market where the commodity is weblog linkage. Currently, Metafilter is worth $27774.44. What's your weblog worth?
posted by Argyle on Mar 30, 2003 - 23 comments

The bubble of American supremacy by George Soros "I see parallels between the Bush administration's pursuit of American supremacy and a boom-bust process or bubble in the stock market. Bubbles do not arise out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but misconception distorts reality. Here, the dominant position of the United States is the reality, the pursuit of American supremacy the misconception." (From Drudge)
posted by thedailygrowl on Mar 12, 2003 - 37 comments

A speculative bubble is created when objectivity, reasoning, and valuation give way to greed and an insatiable desire for profits. On this date in history... October 29, 1929: The date of the stock market crash that marked the start of the Great Depression in the United States. Could it have been averted by the reading of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay?
posted by puddsharp on Oct 29, 2002 - 21 comments

While it's hard to say when the dotcom bubble began to burst, it's now officially clear when the internet stock bubble ended, which would be today. With the NASDAQ taking the first dip to 1996 levels, it's time to grab a Webvan-delivered 40oz out of your orange Kozmo-surplus bag and tip it in honor of all them Pets who still can't drive.
posted by mathowie on Sep 23, 2002 - 20 comments

"We have a dysfunctional global currency and economic system, in which the whole world is set up to sell to the American consumer." As stocks collapse and banks take hits for their Enron complicity, market skeptics like Prudent Bear's David Tice are getting attention. Bears love ripping into herd euphoria and shady Wall Street practices, but deny any joy when businesses fail. Try the Credit Bubble Bulletin, which points out Enron-style vulnerabilities at institutions like J.P. Morgan, then move to the great 401(k) hoax, the myth of accounting reform and Thailand's so-far successful anti-IMF economic strategy. Things will soon get much worse, promise the investors who sneer at "a fascinating intellectual environment where weak analysis continues to dominate discourse."
posted by mediareport on Jul 30, 2002 - 27 comments

The world of the laid-off techie. "Human resource experts say the underemployment trend in the current economic cycle is just starting to emerge. Many workers got the ax when mass layoffs peaked in the summer and fall of 2001, and they coasted on several months of severance and unemployment insurance, which generally lasts six months. With the tech job market still in the doldrums, they're now considering new gigs as waitresses, bartenders, forklift drivers or baby sitters--anything to pay the rent. " I wish the media hadn't/didn't focus so much attention on the suits who seem to only be able to "fail upwards" versus the folks in the trenches. (via /.)
posted by owillis on Feb 11, 2002 - 64 comments

The founders of Webshots.com sold out to Excite@home in '99 for $82.5M, they just bought it back--for $2.4M. $6.7B Excite.com goes for $10M and Blue Mountain Greetings ($780M) goes for $35M. A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon we're talking more than pocket change.
posted by m@ on Jan 8, 2002 - 12 comments

Antidote to Dot-Com Is Dot-Gone, and the Dream With It. The tourists' decampment for winter was quite a spectacle, but the locals dig in.
posted by mlinksva on Nov 27, 2001 - 0 comments

Dot-Com Is Dot-Gone, and the Dream With It A New York Times article on the dot-com-crash. "Each day, the old idols seem to fade further into the dim past, barely recollected in a country where the languages of "revolution" and "warfare" are no longer just business metaphors. This is the next step after the bursting of the dot-com economic bubble — the bursting of the cultural bubble, the end of the nerd as a crossover hit, of the I.P.O. zillionaire as role model to college students." I agree that our country is in the beginning of a cultural revolution; starting with the dot-com crash last year and accelerating with 911. Am I alone or does anyone agree?
posted by Oxydude on Nov 25, 2001 - 23 comments

Last of the dot-com playboys? Henry Blodget, who talked up the tech boom and failed to predict the bust, has taken up Merrill Lynch's general redundancy offer and walked away with a cool $2 million. (This after ML settled with a client who had his portfolio wiped out by following Blodget's recommendations.) Somehow, though, I suspect that many casualties of the shrinking Nasdaq who followed his recommendations might wish a different "lifestyle decision" for him... (NYT, blah etc blah)
posted by holgate on Nov 15, 2001 - 7 comments

Suckers wanted. Or, as my friend put it, Company that thinks it's still 1995 ISO engineer who also thinks it's still 1995.... (I mean, can they be serious?)
posted by mattpfeff on Nov 5, 2001 - 22 comments

yet another "those dang dotcommers" article i'm tired of all these "how the mighty have fallen" articles. When do we get to talk about something new??
posted by christina on Aug 22, 2001 - 17 comments

“Nobody needs information architects anymore” “His problem, he figures, is simple: Nobody needs information architects anymore. The entire discipline was overly specialized, a hologram created by temporarily explosive demand for Web-site design, which vanished last year.” (Link sometimes worked and sometimes did not over the course of ten trials in three browsers. ROBMagazine.com → Table of contents → “Crash Test Dummies” will get you there.)
posted by joeclark on Jun 4, 2001 - 21 comments