Huge boom. Huge boom. Huge bust. Huge bust.

China s credit binge is turning into a bust.

Speculative booms are driven by psychological feedback.

Managers can demand higher and higher returns in the upturn.

After Facebook, come the Hatebook.

Like the advanced economies, emerging economies experienced a boom in 2000 2007.

Moreover, this scenario cannot take place before the slump has turned into a boom.

In the 1990 s, when hard pegs were in vogue, it was believed that flexibility reduced credibility.

And, even when times were good, India never gained a foothold in the global manufactured goods trade.

The family based on traditional registered marriage is losing popularity in Estonia.

American exceptionalism may sell well at home, but it does poorly abroad.

Lenders provide money when times are good, but want their money back when, say, energy prices plummet.

When powerful booms emerge in other sectors, the temptation to argue that this time is different will again be irresistible.

It was, in fact, an excessive speculative boom in the stock market and the housing market that got us into this financial mess in the first place.

According to press reports, the Territory now imports large amounts of organic food and organically grown produce.

Try to ban alcohol in Egypt and you will find that even those who do not drink will start looking for it out of curiousity!

But any such speculative boom is inherently unstable, as the stories evolve in time and with new shocks, whose effect on markets is most uncertain.

Experience suggests that China s external position is highly sensitive to global conditions, with the surplus GDP ratio rising during boom times for the world economy and falling during slumps.

The key problem is simple until 2008, these countries enjoyed a long boom based on cheap and plentiful credit, which allowed them to finance large current account deficits.

Although grants are a nice source of funding for demonstration projects and research, only a for profit approach that attracts broader investment will ensure that this scheme catches on.

The investment boom and the globalization dividend of the last two decades allowed the Party to have its cake and eat it maintaining its rule on the basis of economic prosperity, while failing to establish the institutions critical to sustaining such prosperity.

Hairdressers in Las Vegas lost their jobs partly because households there have too much debt stemming from the housing boom, and partly because many local construction workers and real estate brokers were laid off.

BERKELEY A decade ago, the 2008 Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman, wrote a little book entitled The Return of Depression Economics . It sank like a stone.

But several previous Venezuelan governments presided over similar bonanzas, and few if any invested the resources in public projects and social initiatives, as Chávez has.

As financial markets became increasingly disconnected from the longer term demands of industrialization, unregulated financial flows triggered boom bust cycles, which became a recurrent feature of the developing world during the 1990s.

BERKELEY A decade ago, the 2008 Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman, wrote a little book entitled The Return of Depression Economics . It sank like a stone.

Think of the story of the real estate boom in the United States and other countries in the first half of the 2000 s. This was a story not of a bubble rather, the boom was a triumph of capitalist enterprise in a new millennium.

STANFORD Organic products from food to skin care nostrums to cigarettes are very much in vogue, with the global market for organic food alone now reportedly exceeding 60 billion annually.

So it is doubtful that closer economic policy coordination will prevent new bubbles from emerging. When powerful booms emerge in other sectors, the temptation to argue that this time is different will again be irresistible.

Moreover, commodity booms frequently produce ugly politics in countries with weak institutions, leading to costly struggles for resource rents, which are rarely invested wisely.

The key problem is simple until 2008, these countries enjoyed a long boom based on cheap and plentiful credit, which allowed them to finance large current account deficits.

Parsons pointed out that he was student at Heidelberg at the height of the vogue of Oswald Spengler, the author of Der Untergang des Abenlandes and he didn't give the West more than 50 years of continuing vitality after the time he wrote ... Well, its more than 50 years later now, and I don't think the West has just simply declined.