Slashdot Mirror
The New Boom
DarkClown writes "Wired is running a piece discussing the recovery from the burst Bubble in Silicon Valley. This time, though, it's no Bubble: it's a Boom. They suggest that this latest boom, fueled by Google's ascent, is under steadier footing than last time. Technology and the market seems to be catching up to the hype." From the article: "A boom perhaps, but not (phew!) a bubble. There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters. Booms, on the other hand, tend to have strong foundations and gentle conclusions. Bubbles can be good: They spark a huge amount of investment that can make things easier for the next generation, even as they bankrupt the current one. But booms - with their more rational allocation of capital - are better. The problem is that exuberance can make it hard to tell one from the other."
Actually, I saw it and I'd say its more like a bulge. The difference being that there is a firm foundation and it ends up with a messy splatter in the end.
So when Amazon.com was selling for hundreds of dollars a share, that was ridiculous. But when Google is selling for $434 per share, everything's just fine. Because, um, they sell advertising, or something.
They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters.
I read the above as "They end with a wet poop, leaving behind messy splatters."
It might not be a bubble or a boom... it could be a rush. I have noticed a lot of grizzled men wandering around the bay area lately. Sure, they might be homeless people, or box car hobos, but they could very well be old prospectors. An abundance of old prospectors is a sure sign of a pending rush.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters
Sounds like many a geeks one-handed experience with dirty mags!
Regardless of how much firmer the the base is this time, the earnings and earnings prospects are both so very low compared to stock value. So at some point in future there WILL be a correction.
They suggest that this latest boom, fueled by Google's ascent, is under steadier footing than last time
Oh man, they're actually stating that this bubble/boom/bulge/b???? is on steadier footing but is being fueled by Googles ascent? My, what short memories we have. If anything, the latest b???? appears to be more of an aftershock, related to it's predecessor, just to a lessor degree, but the same root causes and issues.
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
Booms are way better than bubbles! Just look at these examples of booms.
Boom
Boom
If it is all based on google, then its a bubble. Not every start up will succeed like google, or even be purchased by google.
On the other hand the job market is about to boom, or so it seems. I had a developer freind get laid off (by suprise) the first week of Dec., he found and started a new job before New years eve. That is impresive to me, to get a job over Christmas season.
Think Deeply.
'There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters. Booms, on the other hand, tend to have strong foundations and gentle conclusions.'
I object your honor!
Booms destroy the foundation, create massive destruction and leave bits and pieces strewn everywhere, but TINLA.
The future is in computers and the internet, Booms will follow. Now I am off to find the next ubiquitous product with a cool name.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Is is a boom around the Google bubble, or is it a bubble around the Google boom?
If it turns out to be worse than the bubble, they could call it the IT boil...
IT abscess...
Frog blast the vent core.
One thing I learnt from the last bubble (and having read up about other ones in history) people always say "It's different this time..."
.. you have to admit that Adsense is a firmer business model than Pets.com -- or heck, graphical nonrelated banner ads -- and RSS, open web services APIs and stuff like del.icio.us or Flickr are more valuable content than the websites of 1997.
Maybe some lessons _have_ been learned. That doesn't mean necessarily that current pricing isn't off, or that the dynamics of self-fulfilled prophecies have changed, but there's definitely more value on the internet now than around 1997-1999, with less flowers.com fluff.
Maybe a part of the 1990s tech bubble wasn't unwarranted overvaluation, and that adds to the hypothesis of a firmer expansion now.
It's naïve to just go "ah, history repeating itself". History never repeats itself, except as a farce.
Atleast with hardware, you have to build something tangible, like a production line, and actually have a product to offer. This is already a fundamental difference to the dotcoms.
But seriously, take a look at the way the stockmarket works. How does it differ from a classic Ponzi scheme?
Perhaps there MAY be better returns and stocks do have more legitimacy, but that's about it.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
What they say: "A boom perhaps, but not (phew!) a bubble. There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters. Booms, on the other hand, tend to have strong foundations and gentle conclusions. Bubbles can be good: They spark a huge amount of investment that can make things easier for the next generation, even as they bankrupt the current one. But booms - with their more rational allocation of capital - are better. The problem is that exuberance can make it hard to tell one from the other."
How it sounds: "Listen baby, it's going to be different this time, I swear. I know I was a little rough with you before, and I'm sorry about that, I really am. I've changed, baby. You've gotta believe me, I'm a different man."
Free phone calls over the Internet? That's Skype, which eBay just bought for nearly $4 billion.
How does anything that costs free worth $4 billion?
Google shares are possibly over-hyped, but they reflect a very interesting perception: that the Internet is now good for something, but that we don't know where it is going. We had the mass transit revolution (railways), the personal transit revolution (bicycles, then cars), the communications revolution (telephony.) Now we have the information revolution, and anyone who looks like they are reading meaningful signposts is likely to be highly valued.
Pining for the fjords
For better or for worse, the stock market used to be something that only those that knew how to invest really did anything with. Those with no clue on how to invest usually just avoided it, or invested in safe mutual funds or big companies like GE or IBM. Then millions of average families got involved, went crazy thinking it was the lottery and lost obscene sums of money.
.com era. Sorry, but at barely $6.00B in projected revenues for this year, they aren't worth $500/share. If they were consistently making $25B in profit on expenses of $2B, yes, I could see that. God help us, though, when Google utilizes all of its information its indexed to maximize its profits. Privacy won't be just dead, but it'll be publically humiliated, tortured, executed, its body cremated and its ashes unceremoniously pissed on for good measure.
I am a pretty good investor, but then my mom taught me the basics of investing. My father and I are two archetypes of investors. He's the type that goes with the flow, whereas I'm conservative with the amount of money I'll invest, but willing to take risks with small companies that I rationally believe have a good shot of growing big. If I had control over my assets in the dotcom era (I was still in high school), I'd have made almost $1,000,000 before taxes and would have ended up keeping the bulk of it after the bubble burst. My father would have lost everything because he never researched what he was investing in, he'd just buy what the latest rag said was a cool company... like most of the Linux "companies" back then.
The biggest problem we have is that most people don't want to realize that investing is serious work and that it requires that you **learn** what you're doing. It's not the "insert money into slot to double each year for five years" game that they want it to be. Losing everything you invest is a realistic possibility which is why it should come after savings and bills... not before. And if you do nothing but short term investments, you'll only make your broker rich and yourself poor unless you're GOOD at it and have a lot of money to buy in bulk.
My point is that maybe enough of the casual investors have left that we can move forward now. Google's stock, though, is still a holdover from the
It seems that the difference that TFA sees betweeen "Boom" and "Bubble" is that the latter is marked with unwise spending, from the VCs to the board room. TFA could be simply put in a readers' digest form as:
There is economic growth in Silicon Valley that we predict will be more stable and longer-lasting than the "Dot Com Bubble" era, because VCs aren't handing out money as freely, and companies aren't being [as] stupid with their money as they used to be. *GASP!* Real, honest, tried-and-true business practices apply to the internet as well!
Call it a "boom" if you want. It's a new, lucrative market that's gaining financial stability because there are plenty of examples from the "bubble" of what not to do.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
...until they burst. Look at almost all of the press before Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" claim - it was all boom, no bubble, "new economic paradigm" talk. Hindsight is 20/20, if people had largely identified the bubbles we've had a significant time BEFORE they burst - they probably would have not been bubbles.
e.g:
Stan: "Hey, Bob wanna through your nest-egg in to the stock market? I heard it's a big bubble just waitng to burst!"
Bob:Um...no.
This is the best Democracy money can buy?!?!?
You know it's a bubble when people are calling it a "boom".
The NY area is pretty dead for tech. Sure, you get paid more for the finance gigs, but the area's cost of living is ridiculous. I know guys who commute in from the Philadelphia burbs.
Grumble.
The real aftershock of the stock market bubble and collapse is the present real estate bubble. Aftershock may not even properly connote the enormity of the problem. Perhaps chain reaction would be a better word - I think the fallout from the real estate bubble is going to be much worse than with the stock market bubble.
Meanwhile, headlines on the New York Times say:m y.html?hp&ex=1138424400&en=8cf2bc05dcdbc2f7&ei=509 4&partner=homepage>
U.S. Economy Grows at Slowest Pace in 3 Years
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Econo
Cool--maybe the angry unemployed IT workers will get their jobs back! I guess this will reduce the amount of comments around here... Drew
"Google shares are possibly over-hyped,"
Google shares are very overhyped.
Google has done nothing that is new. They have nothing backing them. If you liquidated Google you would make back a tiny fraction of their stock worth. It is fucking asinine is what it is.
When a company that makes the world go round (IBM) stock is not even close to half the worth of a company that has no product, you know the world is fucked up.
All idols fall, and goggle will fall as well. It is the way of things. Soon another young man will figure out how to do what google does, only better. When they do the only happy people will be the few who cashed out early. The rest will be left with nothing.
The future is in deliverables, not data.
IANALBIAAWST
(I am not a lawyer but I am a Wall Street Trader)
I hadn't read Wired for years, and then got a free subscription for something or other. I find the articles almost completely useless and written with such an extreme San Francisco liberal slant that even a commie pinko hippie like me objects. Now THAT takes some doing.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Contrary to the remaining few who say it hasn't, the Internet has had a major impact on the lives of many if not most people, changing how they communicate (email), how they shop (amazon and eBay), and changing where they go for information (Google and wikipedia). Some people did lose alot of money when stocks tanked and businesses collapsed, but the "Internet Revolution", in terms of real people using the Internet in their daily lives, merely hiccupped and kept on going.
It is great to see companies growing again, along with a much greater demand for IT staff. As the article hints to, the next steps will be at least partially fuelled by cheap bandwidth and mobile devices. In the early days of the Internet, growth was fuelled by recreational activities and recreational browsing, but eventually maturing into a truly useful tool for conducting business and for training and education. Now we are going to see the same thing happen with what I will call the iPod economy. So far it has been mostly used for music and entertainment, the next wave of growth will bring business and educational content and applications.
In terms of Google, I really don't see their traditional searching/AdSense business remaining the juggernaut it is for too long. The analogy is not exact, but if we think of the telephone, how successful are the "yellow pages" companies or how much of a business is providing directory assistance (or yellow page listings) for the major telephone companies, even before the internet came along? People just want to find information and will go wherever then can get it the easiest. Search technology is still in its infancy, although it may be google who can make it happen, the required revolutionary changes will more likely come from some small organization.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
What makes this a bubble, just like the last one was is more the outlook. When people are starting companies plans for how they are going to have a cash liquidity event you have a bubble. But its just the beginning of it, and I think we can eak another 3-4 good years out of it easily. That puts the pop around 2009, which just about lines up with what Harry Dent thinks
Almost, if you just consider the alliteration.
Google's stock price is astronomical and will come to earth when the speculation is over. Even other dot.coms will real revenue like Amazon came back to reality.
In the meantime enjoy the party. Google's making money, its inventing new technology, and its employees and customers are having fun doing so.
One of the things that you need to be very afraid of, is when someone is claiming that there is not a bubble, when there is overvalued speculation and rampant turnover. Case in point is the current housing bubble, which I do believe is a bubble.
One thing that you'll get an idea of after a while, is that (especially now), investors are trying to keep the economy afloat by generating another bubble to replace the currently failing one (thank you Greenspan). It's really just musical chairs, and I would seriously look at someone who is saying it's different this time as someone who wants to take my money from me.
Don't be fooled, Wired is part of the media and will further its own agenda and those of its Editors and Shareholders before your interests.
Contrary to popular belief, life is not a bitch. It is far far worse.
Google, not a bubble? History teaches only the wise.
I think this is clearly another bubble. The difference is that VCs are more cautious, it's Google and Yahoo! that are fueling this boom. Look at the ridiculous sums of money that have been paid for Flickr, del.icio.us and other "Web 2.0" sites. These sites don't have the revenue potential to be worth millions of dollars.
-Grant
|grant.henninger.name|
O'Reilly sponsored a "Web 2.0" conference, unfortunately many industry shills attended and now we are reaping the rewards of bringing these vultures together in one place. Each is promoting his/her own version of "Web 2.0" while no two agree on what that means. It's insanity.
What will it take to kill off the "Web 2.0" madness, which has no content whatsoever?
Hear me out on this. The new boom will be automation.
Cars that drive themselves, house hold robots, robotic lawnmowers, expert systems, and better search engines etc etc.
Put your stocks into these areas... Its the next big hype because VCs will see these things and be mystified and start hurling wads of cash at the next roomba.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
http://fuckedgoogle.com./
"please god, just one more bubble." has been the slogan on their banner for 2 years, at least. I wonder if wired was trying to say something. LOL.
In any case, people who say Google can't be in a bubble because it actually makes profits are just morons. Cisco, and Sun, and SGI and Oracle, and Microsoft ALL had huge profits in the dot.com mania boom- more than Google has now. But that didn't stop their stocks from being ridiculously overvalued, and eventually collapsing 90% or more in value from the peak.
The simple answer is the Google is the only "trendy" dot.com left that is raking in cash, so we've focused all our dot.com dreams on ONE SINGLE COMPANY.
And Google's entire business model is based on one thing- tiny little text advertisements that most people click on because they can't even distinguish that they are advertisements rather than part of the website's content. (yes, i know, slashdot people have learned to tune out most adsense ads, but does your GRANDMOTHER know that any link within 4 inches of the phrase "sponsored links" is a paid advertisement?)
Prime Minister: What use is it, Mr. Faraday?
Faraday: I know not, but I wager one day your government will tax it.
Story two:
Prime Minister: Waht use is it, Mr Faraday?
Faraday: What use is a new born baby?
Probably both urban legends (BTW I'm a former RI member, I'm allowed to say this) but they make a point.
Pining for the fjords
"There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation."
Bubbles are also inflated by insiders who exploit the speculation to fleece speculators. In order for this to work really well, however, you need oversight with its hands (intentionally or not) off the tiller. That's what we had in the Dotcom Bubble, methinks. It looked to be good for the economy, so the hand was off the tiller.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Is New Boom the sound your server makes when it implodes at the speed of sound?
As reported by Nasdaq, Google's current P/E is 95, predicted for next year is 36. That means you get 1% return this year. You are predicted to get 3% next year. ING pays 3.80% on a simple savings account today.
Solid foundation. Right.
Hindsight 10/10. I cannot recall hearing a lot of people saying the previous time 'look, a bubble is coming, let's invest and lose'. I don't want to be negative but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In 10 years we'll separate the booms from the bubbles.
Riiiight. Anyone remember the Wired with the smiley face, subtitled "The Long Boom" claiming that this time it wasn't a bubble?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Ugh I live here and have for 15 years. It's not booming or bubbling or any other sort of noise.
Most places have removed their hiring freezes and that's about it.
Salaries for engineers are about 1997 levels and there are about half as many places to work so don't get too excited.
I can go BOOM on the toilet, and still be under control due to steadier sitting.
The last bubble was like hyperinflation of an insidious liquid. This time, it's probably going to be insidious wand-waving to "spread the love".... lots of colors and pretty floaty bubbles. Some people I talk to suggest the next boom will have to be based on REVOlutionary developments, not the same old stuff gone into slightly increased consumption.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
It could just be a coalescing, muliti-colored, creeping, effervescent OOZE..
(image word: incense...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Why do all the articles talk about 'free phone calls'? I do not find even a single VOIP service that lets you call a phone free. PC to PC is not a 'phone' call. Everybody including Hype(Skype!)charges for calling a phone. Ridiculously low amount but not free!
I think the analogy was taken too far already. No need to add to it ;)
All this talk about any kind of boom makes me want to find my illudium Q-38 explosive space modulator. Alas, it will never have the effect it should have.
Technology has finally caught up to what the Internet promised.
This is especially true for broadband access. With prices of ADSL dropping, cable modem access getting faster and faster, more and more people getting access to land line-based broadband, and soon the USA getting wireless broadband technologies of various types, the promise of the Internet is finally being fulfilled. Indeed, Apple's iTunes Music Store would not have been possible without widespread broadband availability.
"The problem is that exuberance can make it hard to tell one from the other." If one looks more deeply into it, it's actually far easier to tell than the poster would imply. Quite simply, for the .com bubble of the late 90s, there was a ton of capital being invested in companies that were yet to turn a profit. These companies also had barely any assets worth discussing. Their market capitalization to total assets ratio was so inflated that one wonders how people didn't notice earlier. Today's "boom" is slightly different in that many of the large, successful companies such as Google and Yahoo are turning very nice, positive EPS numbers, and their market cap to total assets ratio isn't nearly as ridiculous (even if it's still inflated...which is usually the case in a bullish market). Google's current share price is roughly 15x each share's book value, reflected by assets (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=GOOG). This is inflated, but with a 20% annual return on assets, Google has enough cashflow to be able to help justify this. Also, Google has almost 100% quarterly revenue growth, which also helps justify the share price. Basically people don't invest into them in hopes that they will deliver a product that will turn profits in the future; they invest because they're constantly delivering products that are turning a profit. That doesn't seem like a bubble inflated with hot air for me.
I will know that a new boom is underway when I hear Lou Bega on the radio again.
One cool phenom of this boom-bubble is the number of parasite companies spawned by Google API's, especially Google Map integration. Just google (heh) for 'venture capital google maps' and you get a ton of hits. Here's one thats even self-referential.
Isn't this all conjecture and wordplay? I mean was the internet bublle called a bubble before or after it burst? Hindsight changes a lot of titles....
http://crimespree.ca/ - photography, mountain biking
The current hardware boom is easily explained.
Historically (prior to 2000) businesses all typically operated on a 4-5 year technology life-cycle. The only thing that's changed is that the Y2K projects of the late 90's brought all those cycles into sync.
This will be the only "real" hardware boom as differing approaches to hardware replacement are already bringing them back out of sync.
Nothing to see here, move along...
If there's one thing many economists are starting to understand, it's that the rampant abuse of credit in America and the trade deficit are preparing us for a hard landing in the next year or two. The biggest debate is what kind of hard landing... Bond holders believe banks and consumers will hit a credit limit first at which they finally start conserving and some people think foreign investors will decide they're saturated with American credit and stop buying it. I agree with the bond holders, China will never pull out as long as they're profiting. The whole economy is riding a bubble created by home equity credit-driven consumer spending. It's not tech speculation anymore, but when this housing bubble bursts, all of the other countries (hint: Taiwan matters a lot to tech companies) heavily dependent upon our imports will also suffer.
-Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither. -Ben Franklin
It certainly looks like a house of cards waiting to fall.
until it pops.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
With a P/E ratio of 96 and a target of 600 set, I'd say this is not a boom but yet another egocentric bubble by investors who would rather believe in get-rich-quick than any realistic fundamentals. Considering that P/E ratio's are historically in the 14 region and peaks like this were seen in 29, 87, and 99/00, you will see Google and the rest of the morons going along with it fall.
History repeats itself and idiots never learn.
"Orcs got bass, but we got BOOM!"
To reign is to serve.
how they used Skype as an example. I dont get how a company that practically gives away phone calls is worth billions. They make it sound like paying billions for it is a good sign.
Anyone explain this?
So when can I drop out of college to be hired by a new start-up for $60K/year?
Cause getting paid instead of paying for college sounds great.
(Before I get berated for trying to skip out, don't worry, I plan to finish college.
And then make more than $60K/year.)
the headline says it all.
"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."
What did i miss in article?
Wired says there's no bubble - well that's it then. I mean, who can argue with a magazine with their track record.
anyone remember that book? -lol-
the pimps never go away... they just change names.
Many people realize that companies like Google are fraudulent.
Their service are suppose to be 'Free'. But the hours and days devoted to finding: simple, basic, common information-- is a costly crime in itself.
So where are the lawsuits and 'outrage' (other than in front of our computers every day)?
Because this type of accepted 'business model' is prevalent and imbeded into our world-- there is little the average person can do to change it, apparently-- and until now.
But like so many other things in the average persons life, most still: 'make believe' that Google is good, and does what it says it does.
However with the continual discoveries that ALL the leaders of governments, businesses, religions, etc. are part of this Google-like criminal conspiracy, the problem is seen more as something that CAN BE tackled.
These 'leaders' would have all of us believe that we will starve and die if things don't continue on 'the way they are'..(ie.with these handful of criminals in charge).
Bust or not, the criminal 'leaders' are ignorant of the fact that NOONE can stop a man from defending himself, hunting, working, or conspiring good deeds-- in his heart..
Leaders in countries like the USA are showing signs of loosing control of the masses...
They are caught in a quandry that leaves them no choice, but retreat..
However with the proliferation of nuclear arms into many decenters hands, 'The Man' is backed into a corner.
His choices now ONLY consist of the following.
- Nuke the whole earth in a fit of rage:
This is highly unlikely, knowing how 'The Man' likes to live lavishly, while we toil for him in worrisome torture.
- Nuke only 'problem parts of the earth':
Another prospect that the man knows will lead more quickly to his loss of power-- since at the very start of this insanity, the masses will FINALLY rush him and his supporters, en masse, for a decided 'overthrow' of the current criminal system.
- Do nothing:
The Man knows we are onto his scheme, and that we are plotting his eventually being brought to 'severe justice'.
So he cannot stand still-- but he cannot bring himself to leaving the position he has so dearly enjoyed for ages.
-- Safely entrenched at the bottom of 'Bad Karma', now I can finally speak my mind..
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
If you can live without the money for a year (and seriously, if you can't, then you shouldn't even being thinking about buying Google), you can get almost 7% guaranteed with federal I Bonds. The risk is as low as it gets (fully backed, no FDIC $100K limit) and there are also tax advantages.
I hate to be so negative, but a lot of people are going to lose their ass on Google stock. There is no way that stock price is rational in any sense. If I owned any shares I'd be unloading, just like their execs are doing.
Wasn't it Wired that called the Internet bubble the Long Boom. Supposed to last 25 years? No wait! They meant THIS boom will last 25 years.
Guess the author hasn't looked at housing costs in Silicon Valley since the "bubble" burst. They NEVER went down. When you're paying $750k for a 3 bedroom ranch home in Cupertino (cheap!) you are living in a bubble. It WILL burst someday, I just worry it will be an earthquake that will do it (and I'll move back right afterward!)
Could someone explain how a "bubble" differs from the historicaly common boom/bust cycle? Lets not kid ourselves.
C'mon project mainstrike!
"Bang" is the new "boom".
One thing I learnt from the last bubble (and having read up about other ones in history) people always say "It's different this time..."
Last time we were suffering a credit induced bubble. With the dot.com boom, the fed saw an opportunity to loan out tones of money and get away with it without causing hyperinflation or default because of increased productivity and technology infrastructure. When they turned off the loan faucet, it caused an credit collapse within months and brought down the entire dot.com bubble with it.
This time we are suffering a "deflationary boom". This hasn't happened since the mid 1800's. In a deflationary boom, real (inflation adjusted manufacturing and service) costs keep going down because of increased efficiency, outsourcing, offshoring, etc... The problem is that:
a) this is killing the profit margins of industries across the board
b) this is killing any real demand for employment
The worst part is that the Fed is treating it like a deflation caused by a shortage of credit (1929), rather than a deflation caused by efficiency and technology improvement (1860). By loaning out tons of cheap money during the housing boom, they got everyone into long term fixed payments - which is the worst thing they could do, because now people have more debt than they can pay off as the prospects for more cash are getting slim.
What I think is going to happen is that the Fed is going to try and print up more money to water down the value of the dollar so that the economy can afford all it's debt. However, when they do that peoples pay will not adjust to relieve their debt because the ongoing deflation will keep it down. Even worse, while peoples pay won't go up, the price of commodities and needs will - making peoples situation much worse. Translation: it is different this time ... all freakin hell is going to break loose.