An economic bubble (sometimes referred to as a speculative bubble, a market bubble, a price bubble, a financial bubble, a speculative mania or a balloon) is "trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values". It could also be described as a trade in products or assets with inflated values.

While some economists deny that bubbles occur,^{[page needed]} the cause of bubbles remains a challenge to those who are convinced that asset prices often deviate strongly from intrinsic values.

While many explanations have been suggested, it has been recently shown that bubbles appear even without uncertainty,speculation, or bounded rationality. It has also been suggested that bubbles might ultimately be caused by processes of price coordination or emerging social norms.

Because it is often difficult to observe intrinsic values in real-life markets, bubbles are often conclusively identified only in retrospect, when a sudden drop in prices appears. Such a drop is known as a crash or a bubble burst. Both the boom and the burst phases of the bubble are examples of a positive feedback mechanism, in contrast to the negative feedback mechanism that determines the equilibrium price under normal market circumstances. Prices in an economic bubble can fluctuate erratically, and become impossible to predict from supply and demand alone.

David Alan Stockman (born November 10, 1946) is a former U.S. politician and businessman, serving as a Republican U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan (1977–1981) and as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (1981–1985).

Stockman was born in Fort Hood, Texas, the son Allen Stockman, a fruit farmer, and Carol (née Bartz). He is of German descent and his family's surname was originally "Stockmann". He was raised in a conservative family and his maternal grandfather, William Bartz, was a Republican county treasurer for 30 years. Stockman was educated at public schools in Stevensville, Michigan. He graduated from Lakeshore High School during 1964 and received a B.A. from Michigan State University, East Lansing, during 1968. He performed graduate studies at Harvard University, 1968–1970 and 1974–1975. He attended Harvard Divinity School.

He served as special assistant to United States Representative and 1980 Presidential candidate John Anderson of Illinois, 1970–1972, and was executive director, United States House of Representatives Republican Conference, 1972–1975.

Robert Bernard Reich ( /ˈraɪʃ/; born June 24, 1946) is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997.

Reich is currently Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Reich is a political commentator on programs including Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNBC's Kudlow & Company, and APM's Marketplace. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century, and The Wall Street Journal in 2008 placed him sixth on its list of the "Most Influential Business Thinkers". He was appointed a member of President-elect Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board.

Peter Andreas Thiel (born October 11, 1967) is a German-born American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager. With Elon Musk and Max Levchin, Thiel co-founded PayPal and was its CEO. He currently serves as president of Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund with under $700 million in assets under management, and a managing partner in The Founders Fund, a $275M venture capital fund that he launched with Ken Howery and Luke Nosek in 2005. He was an early investor in Facebook, the popular social-networking site, and sits on the company’s board of directors. Thiel was ranked #293 on the Forbes 400 in 2010, with a net worth of US$1.5 billion. However, this number now underestimates his wealth as his Facebook share alone, at a 2010 valuation, is worth US$1.7bn. Peter Thiel lives in San Francisco, California.

Born to German parents in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, moved to America with his parents when he was a toddler, and raised in Foster City, California. Thiel was a US-rated Chess Master and one of the highest ranked under-21 players in the country. He studied 20th century philosophy as an undergraduate at Stanford University. An avowed libertarian, he founded The Stanford Review, now the university's main conservative/libertarian newspaper. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford in 1989 and acquired a J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1992.

Marc Faber, born February 28, 1946, is a Swiss investor.

Faber was born in Zürich and schooled in Geneva, Switzerland, where he raced for the Swiss National Ski Team. He studied Economics at the University of Zurich and, at the age of 24, obtained a Ph.D. degree in Economics magna cum laude. Faber is best known for the Gloom Boom & Doom Report newsletter and its related web site featuring "Dance of Death" paintings created by Kaspar Meglinger.

During the 1970s Faber worked for White Weld & Company Limited in New York City, Zürich, and Hong Kong. He moved to Hong Kong in 1973. He was a managing director at Drexel Burnham Lambert Ltd Hong Kong from the beginning of 1978 until the firm's collapse in 1990. In 1990, he set up his own business, Marc Faber Limited. Faber now resides in Chiangmai, Thailand, though he keeps a small office in Hong Kong.

Faber has a reputation for being a contrarian investor and has been called "Doctor Doom" for a number of years. He was the subject of a book written by Nury Vittachi in 1998 entitled Doctor Doom - Riding the Millennial Storm - Marc Faber's Path to Profit in the Financial Crisis. Faber has become a frequent speaker in various forums and makes numerous appearances on television around the world including various CNBC and Bloomberg outlets, as well as on internet venues like Jim Puplava's internet radio show. Dr. Faber's also engaged the Barron's Roundtable and the Manhattan Mises Circle, lecturing on "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, When is the Next AIG to Fall?" Faber is said to be 8'0" tall