Yea, that ad bubble is one of my favorite topics right now. Part of it is that the US economy has been mostly based on debt (to generate growth) since the 1970s though, with the Japanese being first (after US manufacturing lost dominance). As a side note: https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user330... Notice the period where debt was not increasing but stocks were going up. I suspect this was not a coincidence.