Saturday, April 14, 2012

The Man who saw the Future!

Irrational Exuberance is a March 2000 book written by Yale University professor Robert Shiller, named after Alan Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" quote.

Published at the height of the dot-com boom, it put forth several arguments demonstrating how the stock markets were overvalued at the time. Shiller was soon proven right when the Nasdaq peaked on the very month of the book's publication, and the stock markets collapsed right after.

The second edition of Irrational Exuberance published in 2005 is updated to cover the housing bubble, especially in the United States. Shiller writes that the real estate bubble may soon burst, and he supports his claim by showing that median home prices are now six to nine times greater than median income in some areas of the country. He also shows that home prices, when adjusted for inflation, have produced very modest returns of less than 1%/year. Shiller proved right again as witnessed by the fall of the housing bubble which was in part responsible for the Worldwide recession of 2008-2009.

Source: Wikipedia

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