No Tech Bubble Here, Says CNN: "This Time It's Different."

ErichTheRed writes I saw this on the Money page of CNN today. Apparently, various stock analysts have declared that this run-up in stock prices is different than the 1999 version. OK, we don't have the pets.com sock puppet, Webvan or theglobe.com anymore, but when Uber is given a valuation of $40 billion, can a crash be far behind?

Comments

what, Uber?

[ihtoit]

That ridesharing thing that's getting sued ten ways from Sunday for butthurting established taxi firms?

Something's definitely up if they're getting valued at $40 billion! That's 4 times the UK's annual agricultural output!

No bubble?

[msauve]

If you think Uber is worth $40B, or Instagram worth $33B, I've got some tulip bulbs to sell you.

Re:Nope

[rsilvergun]

The drivers are happy because they're healthy. They're making about $12 bucks an hour after the cost of driving is factored in. That's not enough to buy health care but it is enough to disqualify most from the subsidies. At those wages their paycheck to paycheck, and a car wreck with an uninsured driver away from disaster. Speaking of insurance those drivers aren't anywhere near as well insured as a traditional taxicab driver, which is another reason they can out compete taxis.

But there's another nasty side of Uber we haven't seen yet, which is that as work becomes more and more scarce you're going to see more and more people turning to it to pay rent. It's not so much the sharing economy as the desperation economy. That's the rub. Right now there are some drivers doing OK because $12/hour seems like a lot as long as nothing goes wrong, and there's plenty to replace them when it does. But it's a larger part of the race to the bottom that the modern world's caught up in...

Re:2006: "There's no real estate bubble..."

[jafac]

Oh I remember this, too; in 2007; and I kept imagining that housing demand will always go up, because we're always adding more people, right?

I was naive enough that I could never conceive that we'd get to a point in this nation where vacant, foreclosed houses outnumbered homeless people 4:1. I never dreamed that our trusted financial institutions and ratings agencies would sell their credibility and AAA ratings like a crackwhore sells her virtue. Yet, post 2008 - the banks were willing to sit on empty, depreciating inventory, rather than let their fellow americans sleep indoors under a roof. Disgusting. I learned a lot since 2007.

But I'm pretty sure that when the next crash comes, everybody's going to act all surprised like they didn't see it coming, and though it could never happen like that again.