Columns


Are the share markets heading for a disaster?

Is it another bubble? The huge question – huge concern – of the moment is that share markets around the world might be heading into the land of irrational exuberance. The expression was used by Alan Greenspan, then head of the Federal Reserve Board, in December 1996.

"How," he asked, "do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated assets values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?"

The phrase caught the public imagination and became the title of a book by Robert Shiller, the Yale economist, in 2000 – when it was more apposite, for in 1996 the climb on the US and other main stock markets still had another three years to run, whereas by 2000 the dot-com boom had truly turned to bust.

Now, a decade and a half on, US markets have just passed their previous peak. However, notwithstanding the recent rises, the FTSE 100 index is still 150 points short of its all-time high of 6,930 reached on 31 December 1999, while the Japanese Nikkei index is still less than half its all-time high of 38,916 on 29 December 1989. Funny, isn't it, how both those...

read more
Time for Britain to rue its colonial past
Debasish Mitra
With the full range of its colonial crimes on display today, Britain should be hanging its head in shame and u...

Imran would have to wait for his term to arrive
Omar Aziz
Many of his policies were certainly noble, but Imran Khan always remained mum on how he aspired to translate h...

Cricket and the siren song of fast bucks
Oommen Kuruvilla
Unfortunately, the fact remains that they are made fools by dishonest players who sell their conscience and sk...

We can't turn back the online shopping tide
Simon Kelner
Online shopping is just one of the reasons why actual, real-life, bricks-and-mortar retailing in the towns and...

No doubt a bad week, but not that bad at all!
Dr James Zogby
Benghazi “scandal” pales in comparison to the lies that dragged the US into the Iraq war. What matters to the ...

Austerity has hardened the heart of the nation
Yasmin A. Brown
As life gets hard for the middle classes, they turn harder and the same is happening to those who define thems...


More in Columns
POPULAR IN TIMES

Latest IN TIMES