Don't Expect Media to Call an End to the Bubble

You would have to be a knave to think this level of buyout action will continue indefinitely, and The Business Press Maven is not one. In my start-of-the-year prognostication, I wrote about how this merger game would chuff along to great heights -- but we better be on the constant lookout for that point in time when it would peter or pop (Paul, apparently, was off somewhere).

Of course, there were no direct indicators then that a bad turn was coming. And without a high-profile deal imploding, markedly rising interest rates or another definable danger flag flapping in the breeze, there is still nothing tangible at present that indicates such a turn is at hand.

Here's the key: Being on the lookout for signs of the apocalypse, as The Business Press Maven is, is much different than declaring that the apocalypse is at hand -- as a Wall Street Journal article did in bumptious (read: undocumented) fashion Tuesday.

The End Is Near

Hear me out. The distinction between looking for a sign of the end and declaring the end is rarely one made by the business media. After getting burned by the Internet bubble in the late 1990s, they essentially spent the next seven years predicting the imminent bust of the housing bubble. The housing bubble has popped, true, but anyone who listened to conventional wisdom from the business media missed a solid seven years.