Just a Few Reasons to Be Paranoid

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Dec. 22 at 10:33 a.m. EST. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. For more information about subscribing to RealMoney, please click here.

You know I'm a believer that the boom times that we've been experiencing are set to continue for at least a few more years. And further, you surely know that I expect there might be an echo techo bubble coming down the pipe during those years. But that doesn't mean I'm rigidly set in those views. No, as the brilliant and world-changing Andy Grove once called his book, Only the Paranoid Survive. So with that, here are six reasons I'm paranoid that we're already at "the" top of this economy and market:

1. Time magazine's Person of the Year in 1999, just at the top of the bubble before the ensuing 75% drop in the Nasdaq? Jeff Bezos. In 2006? "You" -- as in blogging, user-generated content, social networking, etc. Is Web 2.0 already in a full-fledged bubble and I'm in total denial? Ugh.

2. The total return on foreign-held capital has probably hit a tipping point of becoming larger than the total return on domestic capital.

3. Russia. Putin is no capital market's friend.

4. Iraq is in chaos, and I don't know how we can get out of there without costing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives or many, many more billions of dollars in support. The Vietnam War, to which there are many parallels, didn't cause the stagflation of the '70s, but that war and its aftermath certainly didn't contribute much virtuousness.

5. Housing inventories are gonna be outta control for the next couple of years, probably no matter what the Fed tries to do to stop it.

6. Google's (GOOG Quote) gone from zero to a $125 billion valuation in eight years. Yeah, I've owned it since day one of its being publicly traded and still do own it "only" trading at 30x next year's earnings estimates. Heck, I've also repeatedly called it the fastest-growing company in the history of capitalism. But come on -- that's a mind-blowing stat even for a believer.