Financial Bubbles EverywhereMichael Snyder And of course similar things could be said about most of the rest of the planet as well. In fact, the total amount of government debt around the world has risen by about 40 percent just since the last recession. But it is never sustainable when asset prices and debt levels increase much faster than the overall level of economic growth. History has shown us that all financial bubbles eventually burst. And when these current financial bubbles in America burst, the pain is going to be absolutely enormous. You know that things are getting perilous when even the New York Times starts pointing out financial bubbles everywhere. The following is a short excerpt from a recent NotQuant article Welcome to the Everything Boom and, quite possibly, the Everything Bubble. Around the world, nearly every asset class is expensive by historical standards. Stocks and bonds; emerging markets and advanced economies; urban office towers and Iowa farmland; you name it, and it is trading at prices that are high by historical standards relative to fundamentals. The inverse of that is relatively low returns for investors. Quite possibly? Were not sure what definition of the word bubble theyre using. But in our book when the price of literally everything blasts upwards, obliteratingthe previous ceilings of historical benchmarks, its a pretty good indication that youre in a bubble. At some point a massive correction is coming. No stock market bubble lasts forever. For a whole bunch of technical reasons why serious market turmoil is on the horizon, please see a recent Forbes article entitled These 23 Charts Prove That Stocks Are Heading For A Devastating Crash. The bubbles in the financial markets have become so glaring that even the central bankers are starting to warn us about them. For example, just considerwhat the Bank for International Settlements is saying Sadly, just like in 2007, most people are choosing not to listen to these warnings. Another very troubling bubble that is brewing is the massive bubble of consumer credit in the United States. According tothe Wall Street Journal, consumer credit in the United States increased at a 7.4 percent annual rate in May That might be okay if our paychecks were increasing at a 7.4% annual rate, but that is not the case at all. In fact, median household income in America has gone down for five years in a row. As the quality of our jobs goes down the drain, our paychecks are shrinking even as our bills go up. This is putting an incredible amount of stress on tens of millions of American families. And when you look at the overall debt bubble in this country, things become even more frightening. In a previous article, I shared a chart which shows the incredible growth of total debt in the United States. Over the past 40 years, it has gone from about 2.2 trillion dollars to nearly 60 trillion dollars Of course not. None of these financial bubbles are. It is not a question of if they will burst. It is only a question of when. And some believe that we are rapidly approaching that point. In fact,Marc Faber believes that we are seeing signs that it may be starting to happen already So what do you think? How much time do you believe that we have before these bubbles start to burst? Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here. 