Bubblicious thinking

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My wife (who works in finance) and I were discussing the terrible arrogance on display in the video I posted below, where the opponents of Peter Schiff's views just laughed in his face for claiming a crash was coming, and we decided that, perhaps that attitude is an integral part of bubbles. Those comitted to the view that "the good times will last forever" begin to sense that the rising market is like Tinkerbell--it will cease to exist if we don't believe in enough. Thus, someone like Schiff is not merely wrong, he is a traitor, and a danger to the people of faith (in the bubble).


Comments

  1. Woody10:25 PM

    Gene, I agree, please repost the video or a link to it.

    From the practical side I was confronted by angry participants in the dot.com bubble. I recall an IPO road show near the peak in New York, where I made a remark about the youth or the corporate officers to those at my table, "Gee, kids, don't you have to be back in class soon!" One of the investment bankers at the table made an idiot defense, saying, "well, Bill Gates was young when he started." Everyone at the table grunted approval and I was shunned. It was a typical day in the trenches. I only went to road shows to pretend I was an institutional buy-and-hold fund which was a sure way of getting a nice allocation. From 1995 to 2000 I sold each and every one of them on the opening day, often on the opening tick. (I'd sometimes get 25,000 shares, and these stocks opened up 100+, LOL) I received a lot of crap for it, they called me a whore, but who is laughing now?

    The same can be said for what I experienced as a bear on Florida real estate in 2004-2006. Oh man did I take a lot of crap as an appraiser. But never before had people stood to lose so much from investing so little. I think everyone was working on the proverbial "last deal" before the wheels came off.

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  2. Woody9:31 PM

    I was too lazy to scroll all the way down. I watched the video, he was right but I'm not astonished by his thinking. It was pretty obvious to anyone intellectually honest. There were a lot of people who knew what was going on. He was just the whipping boy for financial TV.

    ReplyDelete
  3. gcallah9:16 AM

    What was astonishing (to me) was how derisively dismissive his opponents were.

    ReplyDelete

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