Noted economist Robert Shiller has written another book exploiting the term "irrational exuberance." The new tome entitled "Irrational Exuberance, Second Edition" (Princeton University Press, 2005) attacks present day housing market valuations. The previous Shiller book using the same title (a term coined by Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1996) dealt with Internet valuations.

I am certainly not an economist (only a Ph.D. in American history) and will not add my two cents to the housing bubble debate. But I offered an extremely critical analysis of the original Shiller book in August 2001 that has proved, over time, to be largely correct. I felt then, as now, that the Internet was still only at the beginning of its effect on world commerce and information. Shiller's did "not get the Internet" in 2001. He played on the rampant investment fears of the time and parlayed this into a best seller.

Based on Shiller's analysis of the future of the Internet, I would suggest that his new book is probably as clueless as the original.

(By the way, please note my mistake about who coined the term "irrational exuberance" in the article linked above. Alan Greenspan, noted above, was the creator.)