I read a brief article in the WSJ this past week about how there's a cycle of bubbles that investors themselves create. The basic premise is that investors pour financial capital into an industry on the premise that asset prices will rise. As capital is poured in, the asset prices of course rise so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then, when the bubble bursts in that industry, investors make up their losses by pouring their money into a different sector, creating another bubble, more artificially high asset prices, another bust, and the need for yet another bubble. So where's the next bubble? Alternative-energy!
I found this opinion piece ( Democrats aren't innocent bystanders ) interesting on how both Democrats and Republicans share responsibility for polarizing the electorate and undermining some of its faith in democracy. It references two other posts that were pretty good as well: The Disease of Delegitimization The Weimarization of the American Republic The second article is really long and heavy on history. But given all of the comparisons people make between the current times and those of post-WWI Germany, I found it interesting to dive in to understand where the comparisons are coming from and how close we really are. The short answer is that we aren't that close (phew). Seems like post-WWI Germany was incredibly fragile. This was a good excerpt that summarized it: So, unlike the 60s, you have a dynamic in which both sides are behaving like radicals, in which the establishment isn’t yelling “stop,” and in which oikophobia is more evenly distributed, relative to its Boo...
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