Trying to predict the next bubble

Yvette Kantrow, executive editor of The Deal magazine, writes Wednesday about how the business media seems to be falling all over itself to predict the next bubble in the wake of criticism that it failed to do enough warning about the current economic crisis.

Kantrow writes, “That the media blew it is so ingrained in the conventional wisdom that to try to point out that in some cases skeptical stories were written or that disasters are almost impossible to predict is about as fruitful an exercise as trying to sell that spec house on the Gulf Coast.

“Perhaps that sense of collective shame is why the media has been flooded with stories predicting the next bubble, whether it’s in gold, silver, student loans, social media, tablets, China, stock, bonds — you name it, the media has pondered its bubble potential. Apparently, even the U.S. government is in danger of becoming a bubble, according to a recent post on the Business Insider. There have been so many pieces warning of so many different bubbles that The Motley Fool recently declared ‘a bubble in bubble predictions.’

“In addition to trying to ferret out future bubbles, the media is also still exploring the causes of the last crisis and trying to expose those who are most responsible for it. ‘Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?’ asked Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone in February, touching off a refrain that grew louder when Inside Job director Charles Ferguson made the same observation during his Academy Award acceptance speech, and louder still when The New York Times asked the question on its front page in a deeply reported April 13 story by Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story.”

Read more here.