[tallrick]

After finally conquering one of these things I realize it's just like Florida property prices! It starts out as a seed, and slowly starts growing. Then the growth increases till it's a huge bush tangled in everything. Chop a piece off here or there and it grows even faster, Seeds form and spread more of these awful trees. Chop and chop, it's still there. Then one day a big storm rips it out of the ground, it lives for a while then dies. You see when a real estate bubble inflates like our 2002-2005 bubble there's just no stopping it. Like a tree it reaches full size and stays there. Yet rot or insects or a storm can knock it down and even kill it. Rot like corruption, insects like speculators eating it up, and the ultimate: a huge hurricane. Small storms just make it grow faster but when the big one hits it's all over. The interesting thing is that after the whole market collapses, the seeds are already there for a future, larger bubble. All it takes is sun and money flowing like water.