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 on Mar 13, 2008 - View this thread

The Subprime Primer. [via] An entertaining, lo-fi, comic-book style explanation of the complex Subprime Mortgage mess.
posted on Feb 17, 2008 - View this thread

"Here Comes Another Bubble" a very 2.0-savvy song parody with a 'catch all the in-jokes' video.
posted on Dec 4, 2007 - View this thread

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?
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Aug 29, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Aug 16, 2007 - View this thread

Bursting the Bubble - an alternate look at the life of the so-called "bubble boy" David Vetter.
posted on Aug 2, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Jul 11, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Apr 3, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Jan 7, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Dec 30, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Dec 1, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Oct 4, 2006 - View this thread

Donk, box, or bubble?
posted on Aug 18, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Apr 3, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Mar 15, 2006 - View this thread

The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own
posted on Jan 5, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Dec 7, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Nov 28, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Jun 20, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Jun 16, 2005 - View this thread

How to detect a housing bubble. (Via Seeing the Forest.)
posted on May 4, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Apr 14, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Jul 24, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Mar 30, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Mar 12, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Oct 29, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Sep 23, 2002 - View this thread

"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 on Jul 30, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Feb 11, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Jan 8, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Nov 27, 2001 - View this thread

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 on Nov 25, 2001 - View this thread

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 on Nov 15, 2001 - View this thread

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 on Nov 5, 2001 - View this thread

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 on Aug 22, 2001 - View this thread

“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 on Jun 4, 2001 - View this thread

This auction at eBay has to be one of the more entertaining after effects of the dotcom meltdown. Personally, the last suggestion in the ad would be my preferred usage of the item for sale...
posted on Apr 24, 2001 - View this thread

Dot-Com Deaths = Black Plague?

Toronto Star Internet columnist K.K. Campbell takes a look at the startling simularities of the dot-com deaths and the black plague.

"The Dot-Com Death resulted primarily from a little parasite (Internet hypesters, Bombasticus bullroaricus) carried on the body of another parasite (Wall Street IPO underwriters, Securitus scammus maximus) on corporate stocks moving along business capital routes."
posted on Mar 30, 2001 - View this thread

Only one navel left to gaze at? Rumors are flying—Brill's Content and Powerful Media may just be announcing a merger soon ...
posted on Mar 29, 2001 - View this thread

Motley Fool cuts 115 employees The Motley Fool laid off about 30 percent of its staff Thursday, becoming the latest online publisher to recoil amid cost pressures.
posted on Feb 8, 2001 - View this thread

51,631 dot com layoffs as of Feb. 01, 2001. Is it that the web allows us to simultaneously view the usual failure of 99% of new businesses, a sign of the coming recession, or just a result of bad business plans and get rich quick schemes? Or was it simply too good to last? Whatever the reason, it's depressing.
posted on Feb 2, 2001 - View this thread

A short critique of "Boo 2" at Evolt. With a change in business model at Boo.com comes a new problem: 'pogo purchasing,' in which each product must be ordered separately through different retailers.
posted on Jan 31, 2001 - View this thread

The Museum of E-Failure. "May history not soon forget the hell we've all been through."
posted on Jan 30, 2001 - View this thread

"Accept our valuation or let Sand Hill put you into Chapter 11." This article from Red Herring on bridge financing for cash-strapped dotcoms makes the dire nature of the situation pretty explicit.
posted on Jan 24, 2001 - View this thread

Dotcom Yuppies Gone Home. As dotcoms crash and burn, real estate prices start to drop.

Who can say that's a bad thing?
posted on Dec 28, 2000 - View this thread

I think they got a bargain. A company which was in financial trouble let a kid come in for two weeks as an intern. He took a look at their business, immediately set up a web site for them to sell their product, and they promptly received an order for 70,000 pounds through that web site. It appears it will save their company.
posted on Dec 28, 2000 - View this thread

marchFirst circles the bowl... Too bad. I thought it would be cool to work for them but now analyst are predicting the demise of the company. I wonder if they will have a great deals on Macs when they go bankrupt?
posted on Nov 21, 2000 - View this thread

Bye, bye Pets.com Personally, I won't miss that damn sock puppet dog!
posted on Nov 7, 2000 - View this thread

While I originally thought that this was a joke, in the 11/14 print version of Business2.com mentions that they will be shipping and receiving "the goods" via WAP enabled phones. Aww jeah!
posted on Oct 27, 2000 - View this thread