Note: Updated in response to Monday’s news and opinion columns.
Last week’s excitement seemed to take many by surprise, yet it was in fact predicted by many. Start with Charles Morris, who began writing his 2007 book, The Trillion-Dollar Meltdown, in 2005.
“The whole world economy is at risk,” said The Economist, also in 2005. “It is not going to be pretty.” In 2004, the magazine-that-calls-itself-a-newspaper estimated that two-thirds of the world’s housing (by economic value) was “a potential housing bubble.” By 2005, it was calling it “the biggest bubble in history.” And, as it noted in 2003, “soon or later,” bubbles always burst.
