Substantially bigger, but that’s not the whole story. Subprime mortgages were interconnected to everything banks did. The AI bubble isn’t quite so connected in the same way.
Compare this to the Chinese property sector bubble. Around 2020/2021, there were a lot of stories about how China had created a huge bubble and was going to take down everyone when it popped. Instead, it just sorta fizzled out, at least from an outsiders perspective. China has usually kept away foreign investment in their real estate market (along with pretty much all their big companies). There just wasn’t that much fallout to be had outside of China. Tons of doom headlines popped up in Western media, but it was a nothingburger unless you were somehow embedded in the Chinese real estate market.
Let me be clear: the AI bubble popping will hurt. At this point, there’s no way out of it, and it needs to pop sooner rather than later. However, comparisons to the 2008 financial crisis don’t tell the whole story.
Yeah the financial crisis bankrupted the banks themselves. The structural foundation of the financial and banking industries were interconnected to bad mortgages that were distributed into financial instruments everywhere and speculated on like crazy by everyone, because they were mortgages and considered safe like bonds. Part of the reason why companies like GM went bankrupt was because their financial arm was significantly invested in mortgages, banks failed because their entire financial model was centered on mortgage returns, and people defaulted on houses en masse because they were allowed to get mortgages they were never able to afford.
But no one investing in stocks, particularly tech stocks, is doing so without explicitly gambling that money. A lot of venture capital might collapse, retail investors are going to get shit on, the general economy will slow as it does during a recession, but mostly this will play out like the dotcom bubble and be a large asset correction in the stock market. A few years of correction, consolidation of the industry, and everyone will pile onto the next bubble in a decade.
Substantially bigger, but that’s not the whole story. Subprime mortgages were interconnected to everything banks did. The AI bubble isn’t quite so connected in the same way.
Compare this to the Chinese property sector bubble. Around 2020/2021, there were a lot of stories about how China had created a huge bubble and was going to take down everyone when it popped. Instead, it just sorta fizzled out, at least from an outsiders perspective. China has usually kept away foreign investment in their real estate market (along with pretty much all their big companies). There just wasn’t that much fallout to be had outside of China. Tons of doom headlines popped up in Western media, but it was a nothingburger unless you were somehow embedded in the Chinese real estate market.
Let me be clear: the AI bubble popping will hurt. At this point, there’s no way out of it, and it needs to pop sooner rather than later. However, comparisons to the 2008 financial crisis don’t tell the whole story.
Yeah the financial crisis bankrupted the banks themselves. The structural foundation of the financial and banking industries were interconnected to bad mortgages that were distributed into financial instruments everywhere and speculated on like crazy by everyone, because they were mortgages and considered safe like bonds. Part of the reason why companies like GM went bankrupt was because their financial arm was significantly invested in mortgages, banks failed because their entire financial model was centered on mortgage returns, and people defaulted on houses en masse because they were allowed to get mortgages they were never able to afford.
But no one investing in stocks, particularly tech stocks, is doing so without explicitly gambling that money. A lot of venture capital might collapse, retail investors are going to get shit on, the general economy will slow as it does during a recession, but mostly this will play out like the dotcom bubble and be a large asset correction in the stock market. A few years of correction, consolidation of the industry, and everyone will pile onto the next bubble in a decade.