Financial Bubbles, Real Estate Bubbles, Derivative Bubbles, and the Financial and Economic Crisis
Proceedings of APFA7 (Applications of Physics in Financial Analysis), Conference
CCSS Working Paper No. CCSS-09-003
53 Pages Posted: 27 Apr 2010
There are 2 versions of this paper
Financial Bubbles, Real Estate Bubbles, Derivative Bubbles, and the Financial and Economic Crisis
Financial Bubbles, Real Estate Bubbles, Derivative Bubbles, and the Financial and Economic Crisis
Date Written: May 2, 2009
Abstract
The financial crisis of 2008, which started with an initially well-defined epicenter focused on mortgage backed securities (MBS), has been cascading into a global economic recession, whose increasing severity and uncertain duration has led and is continuing to lead to massive losses and damage for billions of people. Heavy central bank interventions and government spending programs have been launched worldwide and especially in the USA and Europe, with the hope to unfreeze credit and boltster consumption. Here, we present evidence and articulate a general framework that allows one to diagnose the fundamental cause of the unfolding financial and economic crisis: the accumulation of several bubbles and their interplay and mutual reinforcement has led to an illusion of a "perpetual money machine" allowing financial institutions to extract wealth from an unsustainable artificial process. Taking stock of this diagnostic, we conclude that many of the interventions to address the so-called liquidity crisis and to encourage more consumption are ill-advised and even dangerous, given that precautionary reserves were not accumulated in the "good times" but that huge liabilities were. The most "interesting" present times constitute unique opportunities but also great challenges, for which we offer a few recommendations.
Keywords: Financial crisis, bubbles, real estate bubble, derivatives, super-exponential
JEL Classification: G01, G17, O16
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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