News media stimulate bubbles, since stories about them boost their audience.

A major boom in real stock prices in the US after Black Tuesday brought them halfway back to 1929 levels by 1930. This was followed by a second crash, another boom from 1932 to 1937, and a third crash. Speculative bubbles do not end like a short story, novel, or play. There is no final denouement that brings all the strands of a narrative into an impressive final conclusion. In the real world, we never know when the story is over.

There is more uncertainty than usual about job futures because computers are replacing more and more human intelligence, and globalization is proceeding at an accelerating pace.

Stock prices are likely to be among the prices that are relatively vulnerable to purely social movements because there is no accepted theory by which to understand the worth of stocks....investors have no model or at best a very incomplete model of behavior of prices, dividend, or earnings, of speculative assets.

I have argued that we need livelihood insurance, which would protect people against the risk of seeing their skills and expertise no longer needed. Such insurance could be offered by the private sector.

Somehow, talking to young students brings you back to reality - it should, anyway.

Physicists have a bias to aspire to be "seers" like Einstein rather than "craftspeople" who do simple and practical research. I have seen that in economics departments. The same must be true to some extent in other departments.