Tangier Punch

Ah ... memories of the Nasdaq bubble. A great article from the Telegraph in the U.K. from a couple weeks ago - Greenspan Should Have Removed the Punch Bowl. It is interesting in many ways - first, the author should be given credit for having written this article at all, and in so doing, connecting a whole bunch of dots. Many of the 2000/2005 parallels seem obvious, but one look at today's real estate market would lead you to believe that not enough people are paying attention. What is most interesting about the article is that when talking about the Nasdaq bubble, Mr. Siklos uses words like "alarm", "bubble", and "sell-off", then cites comparisons to the South Sea Bubble era regarding the VA Linux IPO:

"The warning language I've just read is at least an improvement in disclosure compared to the classic prospectus of the South Sea Bubble era, in which someone offered shares in 'a company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is'. But, I wonder whether the spirit of the times isn't becoming similar to that of the earlier period."

But, when talking about today's odd happenings in the world of real estate and international trade, he opts for the more demure "curious", "strange", and "fret":

A couple of the after-effects of the bubble's end remain curious. One is that it did not lead to any significant or lasting economic malaise in the US - even after the double-whammy of the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Rather, there was a slight recession and a slow recovery.

Although some economists now fret about the declining dollar the way they used to about soaring dotcoms, America's mood remains strangely upbeat.

It's as if, just for a moment, he was thinking about shouting something at the top of his lungs, then thought better of it, and instead simply pointed to poor Bernie Ebbers as a sign that maybe it really is different this time.