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As one economic bubble bursts, another takes hold
Where will the next bubble turn up? In Mr. Janszen's view, the alternative-energy industry's expansion is showing some of the same patterns that allowed values to swell far beyond their true worth during the dot-com and housing booms. For starters, green energy is popular with the media and with politicians - "energy security" has become a catchphrase for both Democrats and Republicans. It has received favorable legislation involving loan guarantees and subsidies, just as the Internet got a sales-tax amnesty in the 1990s and deregulation allowed banks to offer more credit to potential homeowners.
January 15, 2008
by Robin Moroney
in Wall Street Journal
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.
After years in venture capital, Mr. Janszen now runs iTulip, an investment Web site premised on the idea that the financial sector has locked the U.S. into a damaging cycle of bubbles that are disconnected from the actual health of the economy. According to his theory, the finance, insurance and real-estate businesses survive by pouring capital into a sector, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that asset prices will rise. When prices collapse back to their true value, financiers... [continue via Web link]
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