[JasonC]

Horsefeathers again. The choice of the asset has nothing to do with it. It can be growth stocks, junk bonds, real estate, railroads, canals, specific commodities, overseas trade, or tulip bulbs. Do modern governments touch enough things that you can find a fingerprint if you look with a magnifying glass? Sure. But the bubbles were there and they had the usual huge scale effects as soon as there is financial capitalism. They've been with us for 400 years, on every continent and with evey type of government and monetary arrangement known to man.

Only the dead have seen the end of war, and of asset bubbles. They are a side effect of human freedom and the ability to trade capital amounts (credit simply).

Utopias and ideological blame games aren't any more attractive when you do them...

[Brilliant]

It’s a matter of degree. You can find stock bubbles, gold bubbles, etc., that are not created by government. But it really takes a big bubble to bring down the entire financial system, and you’re not going to find that in the modern economy, with hundreds of millions of investors competing against each other for a gain with the speed of modern computers, except where it is created by Congress.