February’s Harper’s Magazine has a thought-provoking article on inflationary bubbles, that is:
“asset-price hyperinflation”—the huge spike in asset prices that results from a perverse self-reinforcing belief system, a fog that clouds the judgment of all but the most aware participants in the market. Asset hyperinflation starts at a certain stage of market development under just the right conditions. The bubble is the result of that financial madness, seen only when the fog rolls away.
After an overview of bubbles from the South Sea Bubble to more recent affairs, Harper’s speculates as to what the next bubble might be:
There are a number of plausible candidates for the next bubble, but only a few meet all the criteria. Health care must expand to meet the needs of the aging baby boomers, but there is as yet no enabling government legislation to make way for a health-care bubble; the same holds true of the pharmaceutical industry, which could hyperinflate only if the Food and Drug Administration was gutted of its power. A second technology boom—under the rubric “Web 2.0”—is based on improvements to existing technology rather than any new discovery. The capital-intensive biotechnology industry will not inflate, as it requires too much specialized intelligence.
There is one industry that fits the bill: alternative energy, the development of more energy-efficient products, along with viable alternatives to oil, including wind, solar, and geothermal power, along with the use of nuclear energy to produce sustainable oil substitutes, such as liquefied hydrogen from water.
This is followed by a speculative chart on what an alternative energy bubble might look like:
Alternative energy doubtless has the ability to be the Next Big Thing. Peak oil, uncertain gas supplies, gathering interest from the political mainstream and the populist desire for energy independence all suggest that the sector has the potential for rapid growth. And then there’s the interest from the venture capitalists. This week’s Economist has a piece on how the bright young things of Silicon Valley are turning their attention to the area of alternative energy. Forbes ran a similar story last month.
I wonder if in 10 years we’ll be sitting in a bar consoling each other on getting burned in the Solar Energy Bubble or maybe about how we paid for second homes off the proceeds of that wind turbine IPO. Maybe it’s time to go long alternative energy.
Not too long though.
