The Next Bubble: Priming the Markets for Tomorrow’s Big Crash
July 14th, 2008Mmm hmm.
Via: Harpers:
There is one industry that fits the bill: alternative energy, the development of more energy-efficient products, along with viable alternatives to oil, including wind, solar, and geothermal power, along with the use of nuclear energy to produce sustainable oil substitutes, such as liquefied hydrogen from water. Indeed, the next bubble is already being branded. Wired magazine, returning to its roots in boosterism, put ethanol on the cover of its October 2007 issue, advising its readers to forget oil; NBC had a “Green Week” in November 2007, with themed shows beating away at an ecological message and Al Gore making a guest appearance on the sitcom 30 Rock. Improbably, Gore threatens to become the poster boy for the new new new economy: he has joined the legendary venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which assisted at the births of Amazon.com and Google, to oversee the “climate change solutions group,” thus providing a massive dose of Nobel Prize–winning credibility that will be most useful when its first alternative-energy investments are taken public before a credulous mob. Other ventures—Lazard Capital Markets, Generation Investment Management, Nth Power, EnerTech Capital, and Battery Ventures—are funding an array of startups working on improvements to solar cells, to biofuels production, to batteries, to “energy management” software, and so on.
That was a great article. I think this boom/bust cycle could be said to account for accelerating change in technology and the overall complexity of the world. You could look at the dinosaurs and their extinction in similar terms, if you wanted to get loose with the metaphor.
He’s right on the money that alternative energy will be the next boom, though I think a boom that emphasized renewables would leave us better off than if nuclear and biofuels are the focus. The next bubble after that will be in NBIC related stuff, brain interfaces and nanotech and other things that freak you out. The securities will be tied to the novelty of information patterns. Fasten your intellectual seatbelts.
If the U.S. government continues to bail out its shills, is that a bubble bursting?
I dunno.
Looking for humor in the world today. Here is some tongue in cheek:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/recession_plagued_nation_demands