Posts Tagged ‘eBay’

Irrational e(xu)Bay(rance)

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

An unusual title and worthy of a little elaboration, methinks.

I was looking for a play on words that would wittily lead into a post on irrational things I’ve seen lately on eBay. There was an Ebay-based pun that jumped out at me, but I’m going to save that for a rant post, should I ever need to write one.

The phrase is a rip-off of irrational exuberance, a throw-away remark once made in the middle of a speech by Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve. Those two little words illustrated the influence that the world’s foremost economist possessed; no sooner had he said them, the stock market slumped, financial-sector workers latching onto them and taking heed of his warning and causing a slowdown in what had been a booming economy. Whoops.

Well, I’ve been privy to some irrational behaviour on eBay lately. The tie-in with economics writes itself too, since it’s clearly boom behaviour.

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