Leuk stukje van Krugman over bubbels, welke te vrezen en welke niet.
On the whole, I find it amazing and distressing that fear of new bubbles is playing such a large role in current policy discussion, leading too many prominent economists to recommend raising interest rates in the face of a hugely depressed economy. Even if you believe that excessively low policy rates were a key reason for the housing bubble — which I don’t — the idea that we should be raising rates now brings to mind the old joke about the motorist who runs over a pedestrian, then tries to fix the damage by backing up, and running over the pedestrian a second time.
Beyond that, I think we need to bear in mind that while bubbles are in general a bad thing, just how bad depends a lot on the context — in particular, whether the inflation of the bubble has been accompanied by a big increase in leverage on the part of those buying the inflated assets.
Consider the stock bubble of the late 1990s. It was crazy, and when it popped U.S. households suffered a capital loss of about $5 trillion. This was bad, and helped cause a recession. But it never rose to the level of economic catastrophe.
Lees verder op Krugman’s Blog