What caused the Great Crash of 2008? The proximate cause was the collapse of house prices. Why did house prices collapse? There is an interesting post over at Freakonomics which suggests that the collapse in US house prices was triggered by the large increase in gas (petrol) prices in 2006-7, which dramatically increased the cost of commuting from the suburbs. The full paper is available here. However, the increase in gas prices was only a trigger, and it cannot explain the extent of the fall in house prices in the USA, Ireland, UK, and other economies.
According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money. George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here . Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.