Cory Aquino and the Psychology of Bubbles

When everybody is convinced that something has a very high value—whether tulip bulbs in the seventeenth century or Cory Aquino in the twentieth—there’s no point in trying to get people to change their minds. But you don’t have to buy. You can wait for the bubble to burst, and try to understand how it happened and what will come after.

The extraordinary failure of the Philippine legislative election of May 11 may well have started the process that will burst the Aquino bubble. So it is not too soon to try to see through and beyond that bubble, even though most of Washington and Manila is still caught inside it.

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When everybody is convinced that something has a very high value—whether tulip bulbs in the seventeenth century or Cory Aquino in the twentieth—there’s no point in trying to get people to change their minds. But you don’t have to buy. You can wait for the bubble to burst, and try to understand how it happened and what will come after.

The extraordinary failure of the Philippine legislative election of May 11 may well have started the process that will burst the Aquino bubble. So it is not too soon to try to see through and beyond that bubble, even though most of Washington and Manila is still caught inside it.