Thanks to Rachael and Lou at PERL Mortgage, I’m now in the know that CNBC is calling the 00′s “The Bubble Decade.” Though I think the Bubble Decade is probably a great moniker, I’m wondering if we can do better, guys. What about the iPod Decade — even better, the Clickwheel Decade? This was, really, the decade of the clickwheel. Wasn’t the iPod boom bigger than the housing boom? And the iPod’s bubble hasn’t burst; rather it transition into the iPhone. Ah, technology summaries. Japan refers to the ’90′s as the Lost Decade. Maybe the Spiraling Decade is a better term. The Dirty Jeans Decade. The Bush Years. The Decade of the 3-1-1 Liquids and Gels. Bubble’s Good. Sham-Wow’s Better.

I’m getting a genuine kick out of learning about the National Bureau of Economic Research which recently posted this article about the first financial bubble occurring in Paris, London and the Netherlands in 1720. Nice. Who knew there were financial bubbles back then; I figured it was mostly horses and buggies and people playing fiddle for the first time. From their blurb: Explanations for these linked bubbles primarily focus on the irrationality of investor speculation and the corresponding stock price behavior of two large firms: the South Sea Company in Great Britain and the Mississippi Company in France. Makes you wonder if stress surrounding this bubble indirectly led to outbreaks of violence in the French & Indian War in North America in the 1750′s. Or even the creation of artificial demand for an early form of Tazo tea.