For a bubble to have a genuinely valuable lasting effect, it must do something more than construct useful things wastefully.

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This was a big bubble, and when it burst it had a big effect.

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Top designers certainly tapped into them, too, with Gareth Pugh's dress that uses bits of garbage bags for a featherlike effect, John Galliano's Christian Dior newsprint dress and the bubble-wrap looks from Alexander McQueen's 2006 Rubbish Collection.

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Although an expansive monetary policy and the massive inflow of cheap money helped inflate the housing bubble, the financial crisis as we know it would not have occurred without the toxic effect of subprime lending.

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The study also discovered that this effect is found in the events they choose to report on, which narrow as the bubble grows.

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Doubts remain, though, about the effect these platforms could have on inflating the valuations of companies and leading to a much dreaded bubble, especially in tech.

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