REAL ESTATE BURST, UPCOMING RECESSION, AND SOARING COMMODITY PRICES

REAL ESTATE BURST, UPCOMING RECESSION, AND SOARING COMMODITY PRICES: "Having lived and worked in San Francisco during the Tech and Dotcom bubble, I had a first hand glimpse into the bubble mentality and the irrational exuberance of your average consumer. From Dotcom companies throwing lavish parties (while reporting negative earnings) to college students investing their school money in the stock market, to the creation of “short- lived paper millionaires,” I easily recognized that this move up in the stock market was not sustainable. In the midst of this bubble, many people would look at their stock options or 401k plans, classify themselves as millionaires, and spend money in the economy that further propelled the rise up in the stock market and further expanded the bubble. The end result was that most of these stock options expired worthless, investors lost millions of dollars in the stock market, and the “paper millionaires” where no longer millionaires.
Throughout history, you will find notable examples of manias, Ponzi schemes, and bubbles that have ended up in disasters with investors cutting back on their spending and scrambling to atone for their financial mistakes. This scenario did not happen after the Dotcom bubble. Instead, investors shrugged off their losses as they saw the value of their homes skyrocket. Consequently, the rise up in real estate prices allowed them to continue spending and temporarily delayed the US economy from heading into a major recession. I believe that 2006 will be the beginning of the burst of the real estate bubble, and that this burst will have immediate and severe consequences on the US economy as a whole."