By Noralyn Dudt
In one of the first
recorded Bitcoin transactions in 2010, a hungry computer geek in Florida spent
10,000 of the cryptocurrency on a couple of takeaway pizzas. By late 2017, the
cost of those pizzas at Bitcoin's then market price was close to US$200 million.
Not too long after that, the leading crypto's market value surpassed many of
the world's largest companies, including Boeing, Toyota and McDonald's.
Unbelievable? Such a vast sum, yes for little value. Was it real ? Yes it was...
but it didn't last long because it was just a bubble floating in the air. As
with many other "bubbles" in the past this bubble also burst. Surely
investors' initial giddiness and
excitement was soon wiped out when they realized that their money was gone.
But how can one explain
such irrational and irresponsible thinking—that investing a dollar in
something "in the air" would yield a million times in such a short
time? It has to be fueled by hype that
can easily and quickly turn into a mania
just like the tulip mania in the Netherlands in 1634. It was accompanied
by wild speculation in the bulb that needed governmental intervention. In the
book, "The Madness of Crowds and Extraordinary Popular Delusions,"
the author explained that "as prices rose, people got swept up in a spectacular
fever, some even spending a year's salary on rare bulbs in the hope of
reselling them for a profit."
And not too long ago, people were buying houses that were so
inflated driving the mania further. Before the mania, I sold a house in the
year 2000 for only US$200,000. A few months later, it was sold for US$450,000
by the person who bought it from me. The buyer of course borrowed the sum from
the bank. But prices went down for a while leaving the new owner stuck with a
mortgage that was so high. The seller ( my previous buyer) went on to buy a
bigger house which was also soon deflated, and the story goes… the bubble bursts,
and you lose.
The broad inflation in the prices of bonds, stocks, real estate,
cryptos, and just about every financial asset produced an extraordinary surge
in wealth. In the years between the stock market trough in early 2009 and the
10th anniversary of Lehman's bankruptcy, US household wealth nearly
doubled. By late 2018, according to Financial Times, American households were
worth more than US$100 trillion, a sum equivalent to five times US GDP. By
comparison, household wealth in the post-war decades averaged just over three
and a half times GDP. Total household wealth was higher than at its twin peaks
in recent real estate and internet bubbles. Never before had Americans been so
rich. Never before had they done so little to amass so much wealth.
What is a bubble economy?
The phrase came into popular usage in the late 1980s to describe Japan's
bubble-distorted economy. It was a time when the value of all homes in Tokyo
could buy half of the United States. The "baburu keiki" (bubble
economy) described the condition by which inflation in real estate and the
stock market had entered deep into the sinews of Japan's economy: corporate
profits boosted by financial engineering; business investments fueled by
warrant bonds, which linked the corporate cost of capital to the price of the
issue shares. However, the earliest reference to a bubble economy came several
decades earlier, from Virgil Jordan, the post-war president of the American
National Industrial Conference Board. In
1948, Jordan warned that:
“Our economy, and as much of the world's, has been floated upward on an
iridescent, ever-swelling bubble of
money manufactured by government to stimulate, sustain, speed and subsidize
individual and collective consumption…. The business outlook today depends here
and everywhere more upon the future movements and dimensions of the American
money bubble than anything else…. Money-bubble economies have always
burst, ultimately, and this one must, too, though no one can say
with certainty when.”
In his most recent book "Time and Interest," Edward
Chancellor wrote about a "Herd of Unicorns" where capitalist Aileen
Lee came up with the term 'unicorn' to describe start-up companies valued at
more than a billion dollars. She called them "unicorns," she said,
because it means something extremely rare, and "magical." This
valuation might have been "magical" but "unicorns" became
much less rare, after it ceased being "magical." One of the
"magical" entrepreneurs Elizabeth Holmes who founded Theranos bled
investors of more than one billion dollars before going bankrupt—a unicorn-sized
loss. She claimed to have developed technology for conducting a wide range of
medical tests from a small drop of blood extracted from the finger. She claimed her "mini-lab" to be
the "most important thing humanity has ever built." It was a hype
that turned into a mania. Sadly, it turned out to be the worst disaster for
those people she "bled" of their savings.
In the last 30 years we've seen so many examples of the
"greater fool theory" in the Ponzi schemes by Madoff who is now in
prison. His prey were not only individuals but also investor groups and nursing
homes who wanted to make millions.
People who bought into his hype and scheme were soon disillusioned but it was
too late. The "greater fool theory" is guaranteed only when another "fool" decides to be sucked
into the system. It can be viable for a while but eventually when there are no
more "fools," this pyramid
scheme collapses.
Huge financial companies like Japan's Nomura Co. and
Germany's Deutsche Bank were even lured
into financing mortgages during the real estate bubble. Both companies lost in
the hundreds of millions of dollars when
the buyers could no longer pay mortgages that were too high.
Enron, an energy, commodities, and services company was once a
Wall Street darling. It had reached dramatic heights only to face a dizzying
fall. Its collapse affected thousands of employees and shook Wall Street to its
core. At Enron's peak, its shares were worth US$90.75; just prior to declaring
bankruptcy in 2001, they were trading at 26 US cents... yes, cents. To this
day, many wonder how such a powerful business—at the time one of the largest
companies in the United States—disintegrated almost overnight. Also, difficult
to fathom is how its leadership managed to fool regulators for so long with
fake holdings and off-the-books accounting. Its CEOs practiced outright
deception when it used fraudulent accounting practices to inflate the company's
revenues and hide debt in its subsidiaries.
So... what am I trying to get at? Investment companies may appear
legitimate and they can be. However there comes a time when their funds erode, and then they start
"cooking" the books. By the time government regulators find out that
they have been "playing with the numbers" it is often too late. They
may be put in prison, but this is no
salve for the people whom they have defrauded.
The Philippine government needs to be aware of the dangers and
pitfalls when investing overseas. These "legitimate" investment
groups always do well in the beginning. But there are "dark forces"
within the system, though such forces are not
clear-cut. When those "forces" come to the surface, it will be
too late. Investing at home would be more profitable in the long run—in the
education, health, and welfare of your citizens who are your greatest assets.
An educated, disciplined and healthy citizenry is guaranteed to amass wealth,
real wealth for the homeland.
Noralyn Onto Dudt currently
resides in North Bethesda, Maryland
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