1. Internet bubble: Lots of people were aware back in the late 90s that the internet was not really a moneymaker. There was a magazine that compared the net way to the old-fashioned way and it was really a wash in a lot of cases.

2. Housing bubble: Different bubble for a different reason. Internet bubble was based on unwarranted optimisim. Don't think Fed interest rates had much to do with the housing bubble. Think that had more to do with the reasons cited in the piece above.

3. Yeah, people could tell that there was a housing bubble because housing sale prices had lost their relationship to rental prices.

4. Not really sure that Bush had done anything to shorten the first recession of his term. His theory was that tax cuts would do it and folks have shown that the tax cuts were irrelevant. Growth is the natural tendency of the economy. Seems to me the 2001 recession, as most recessions do, just plain ended.

5. Good description of behavior during bubbles.

6. The idea that letting car companies go bankrupt because the "creative destruction" is good in the long run is the philosophy that was in vogue before the Great Depression. the whole point of the New Deal was that they had to shave off and cool down the rough edges of the economic theories. Life in a pure capitalist economy was just too rough for the average citizen to deal with. The idea of "just let auto companies fold" is the exact idea behind NAFTA and "Free Trade," the idea that each country should simply concentrate on what it does best and let a single company in Germany take care of all the beer, a single company in Switzerland take care of all the watches, etc. There's a reason Japan subsidizes rice, even though they'd be able to get cheaper rice from Korea. Having ones' own workers have jobs is a valuable thing in and of itself. Getting the best product for the lowest price is simply not all there is to an economy. In that direction lies extreme inequality, with, well...like what the US has been developing for the last several decades, with the very top of the income ladder making lots and lots and everybody else getting poorer. That was the whole idea behind the anti-globalization movement of the late 90s.

7. Investments: Yes, the Bush Administration "investment" was in war and that was a complete waste. No, I don't buy the idea that Obama is doing the same thing Bush was doing as Bush was spending everything on weapons and had his corporate buddies just plain stealing from the American people. Not at all clear as to why buying goods is not an investment as there are "reverberating" economic effects that result from buying civilian items. You buy a car, you can get to jobs further away and get to entertainments. You buy lipstick, you can get a date and the two of you will then spend money doing things out in town. Weapons don't have this "reverberating" effect, which is why Republican spending on weapons doesn't have anywhere near the "bang for the buck" that spending on just about all civilian goods does.

Nah, I completely disagree that Schiff has any valuable insights to contribute.