Open Thread - 25 June 2026 - Bubble Pops Soon?
Bubble Pops Soon?
Matt Stoller recently put out an article about the AI bubble called 'What Would It Look Like If the AI Bubble Popped?'. He compares the possible popping of the AI bubble, and the consequent crash of the economy with a few other 'recent' bubbles, such as the 2008 financial crisis with its stupid bailouts of the big banks and not the little people (thanks Obama!) and the 2000-02 dot.com bubble bursting, which sent us into a recession.
Stoller notes:
'I think that an AI bubble popping could be worse than the dot com bubble, for a few reasons. The first is that we are a much more corrupt society, and so there will be less trust when a collapse happens and contagion is widespread. The second is the U.S. economy is less diversified today. We had a much stronger industrial base in 2000. Our financial markets are dependent on a few companies betting on AI data center spending. The counter-argument is that we are better at bailouts, so the Fed could stop contagion more easily. That’s possible too.
Not sure I agree with the counter-argument, because the bailouts aren't going to help the little people, are they?
Stoller goes on to talk about what and who could be hurt in a possible AI bubble burst.
The people who build and run the data centers will be hurt, of course. Regular consumers will be hurt, because the stock market owns so much of what regular consumers invest in, whether willingly or not (401ks, retirement accounts, etc). Retirees will be hurt, because their investments, willing or not, are in stocks now. Private equity, Academic Institutions and State and Cities are going to be affected too.
Stoller writes about Preparing for a Crisis and that section of his article is really good. Here's his finishing statements (I'd suggest reading the whole section, because he explores some of the things we might do, based on, for example, the New Deal, and I'm not quoting that) which are really good:
These are remarkable possibilities, if we can convince people there is hope on the other side of the losses. That’s what happened in the New Deal, but of course, it took four years from 1929-1933 of fights over how to allocate losses and a national calamity before newly elected leaders could sweep away the old order. And that’s a huge risk - in Germany the political turmoil of that calamity turned out, well, differently.
Predicting the end of bubbles is impossible, so this one could run on for years. But in my view, this AI bubble should pop. It’s a bad policy choice to focus most of our economic investment in data centers and copyright theft. This strategy is now so important to growth that President Trump is even supporting a moratorium on state regulation of AI, which is very bad idea.
That said, the end of financial bubbles is often dangerous and unpredictable. And I don’t have a lot of confidence the people who run our central banking order will recognize what to do. On the other hand, at least this time Larry Summers won’t be the architect of whatever we end up choosing.
What do you think about this? I gotta agree with most of it, and had to laugh at the sentiment about Larry Summers 
.
Ok, Here's the open thread! What's up, whatcha doing? Reading? Thinking? Listening to? Remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!
Comments
Happy Thors-Day!
Hope all is going well! I've had a very busy week so far. Spent the early part of the week (and last weekend) preparing for a visit with a guardianship lawyer which happened yesterday. It was a very good visit, but dang, there is so much I have to do and take on in the next few months and year and so on. Still, at least there is a future visible now!
What's up with everyone? How's it going?
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
Time Sensitive - vote on billion$ for Israel is *today*
Be a good occasion to call your congress critter on this one:
amendment to be offered by Thomas Massie to strip out
$3.3 billion in funding for Israel from the appropriations bill...
Stop funding the genocide state
.
It makes good moral sense.
Zionism is a social disease
And in the category 'Stuff You Couldn't Possibly Make Up'...
Levels and levels of irony:
From my limited understanding
.
the so-called data centers housing these AI nodes
are, at least in part, funded by the gulf oil states. They
send the proceeds of their petroleum product to the US
in petrodollars. Which is, in turn, invested in AI enterprises.
Perhaps with the restricted flow caused by trump's war, the
cash flow has dwindled. Not sure if that is enough to pop the
bubble, but it surely can not improve the situation.
Zionism is a social disease
Good morning, sima!
Guardianships are so complicated! I admire you for accepting this enormous personal and legal responsibility. I hope that attorney could relate the legalese to you in layman's terms.
I finished up 2 more divorce cases and hope to finish the rest of them in the next couple of weeks.
I saw a quote by Jeff Bezos somewhere yesterday. He said human water consumption was harmful to the AI data center development. Now, he didn't say drinking water, laundry water, bath water, farm irrigation water, but I bet he would be happy if all we humans who are not billionaires were thirsty, dirty, and hungry. I also bet every billionaire feels the same way.
Well, off to work I go!
Thanks for the OT, chica!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
You're being generous -
"but I bet he would be happy if all we humans who are not billionaires were thirsty, dirty, and hungry. I also bet every billionaire feels the same way."
they want us dead.
This briefly touches on AI
.
Primarily discussing the new security architecture
developing in West Asia without the US.
Transition Protocol - 37 minutes
Zionism is a social disease
I’d missed it, but June 8th was the 60th anniversary of the
… Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, an unarmed intelligence-gathering ship.
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-remembering-the-liberty/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/08/israels-attack-on-the-uss-libert...
https://ussliberty.org/
I read quite a few
articles on the attack. President Johnson specifically covered it up so as not to "embarrass" his dear friend and ally, Israel. The survivors were threatened with "something bad" if they spoke the truth about what they experienced.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I have come, at long last,
to finally understand and fully believe that the US has in fact never been a "democracy", let alone any sort of "shining city on the hill". It has always been nothing more than a kleptocracy with a good PR department. Literally nothing more. It exists only as a mechanism to steal from the indigenous populations, its own citizens, and finally all other nations; all with the goal of enriching the greedy and sociopathic few who have clawed their way into becoming members of the latest group of oligarchs.
We as a nation have always lived by Barbossa's Pirate's Creed from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies: "Take what you want, and give nothin' back". It is now no longer possible for any amount of lipstick to disguise the face of the underlying pig.
When the AI bubble pops, and pop it will, the only certainty is that We The People will be left sucking hind tit in the ensuing collapse. Sorry if that causes any inconvenience...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Agreed
.
they steal the land and water without regard for
human need for some computer generated leash.
Greed should be a punishable offense IMO.
Zionism is a social disease
Congrats! Fully agreed.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good morning Sima, et. al. I part read and part skim
assorted news sources to generate, for myself, part-skim news, somewhat similar to part-skim milk. This involves, among other things, reading vastly more readlines than articles, etc. One thing that cought my eye today was the headline
simply because it seems to assume that the EU has had at least one "principled policy", an idea for which I think there is no real evidence nor any possibility for conclusive support, in short, afactual nonsense.
To dip into actuality, the VZ quakes, last I read were a 7.1 followed almost immediately by a 7.5. The Loma Prieta quake, which really hammered the SF Bay Area, despite many decades of ever increasingly stringent quake codes due to our place in the "ring of fire" was only a 6.9 Keep in mind that the scale in question is logarithmic, so that 7.5 was a gawdawful monster. Nonetheless, Colombian news sources assert that all danger of any Caribbean Tsunamis has now passed.
RT tells us that "Trump orders probe into oil giants", sub-head: ""Gasoline prices have not fallen fast enough despite a sharp drop in the price of oil, the US president has said"" The first paragraph is about as far as I got:
[ https://www.rt.com/news/642045-trump-gasoline-prices/ ]
This is of course propagana and purely performative, but also profoundly ignoranrt and stupid. For starts, this is, as Ms. Pelosi once assured the world, A Capitalist System Of course, it isn'r really a system, just a process, but the crux of the matter is that "gouging" doesn't exist. Caveat emptor and charge whatever the market will bear are the driving maxims of capitalism. If people will pay a given price then it is not, by definition, incorrect or improper in any way, that's the way capitalism works. The whole point of this childish program is to try to confince the publis that "The Price of Oil", a mythological number and concept has been plummeting and that this should also drive down the price of gasoline and Pennzoil. That is all pure nonsense. For starts, the oil companies have all, in the past, testified before Congress that they each charge what their in house experts estimate the market will bear, which is exactly what the capitalist model assumes they will do and what the US courts mandate they must because their one goal, under law, is to maximize shareholderr return. Beyond that, please see: https://caucus99percent.com/content/oil-cost-oil-and-gas-price-disconnec...
I have an eye appointment, so, time to run
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Puns for fun
A commander walks into a bar and orders everyone around.
I told my girlfriend she should lower her standards – she said she already did.
The calendar’s days are numbered.
There was once a cross-eyed teacher would couldn’t control his pupils.
My first job was working in an orange juice factory, but I got canned: couldn’t concentrate.
My math teacher called me average. How mean!
I’m friends with all electricians – we have good current connections.
Sleeping comes naturally to me; I could do it with my eyes closed.
What did the surgeon say to the patient who insisted on closing up his own incision? Suture self.
I got over my addiction to chocolate, marshmallows, and nuts. I won’t lie, it was a rocky road.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981