The point is, however, that in the real economy (a small capital market), bubbles tend to be contained by the availability of savings and credit, whereas in the financial economy (a disproportionately large capital market compared with the economy), the unlimited availability of credit leads to speculative bubbles, which get totally out of hand.
In other words, whereas every bubble will create some “white elephant” investments (investments that don’t make any economic sense under any circumstances), in financial economies’ bubbles, the quantity and aggregate size of “white elephant” investments is of such a colossal magnitude that the economic benefits that arise from every investment boom, which I alluded to above, can be more than offset by the money and wealth destruction that arises during the bust. This is so because in a financial economy, far too much speculative and leveraged capital becomes immobilized in totally unproductive “white elephant” investments.
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