[roaddog727]

About 20 years ago, I was working on a PhD. on just this sort of thing. Regretfully I never got to complete it (Ran out of funding). But essentially, what we are now seeing is Chaos theory in action. (See James Gleick’s book “Chaos” and review the works of Feigenbaum and Mandelbrot).

Systems going from order to disorder in an orderly fashion - driven my socioeconomic factors. the Socioeconomic factors - uncertainty - drive the mob mentality, creating the disequilibrium in the system causing these Chaotic events.

Once the socio-enconomic factor stimulus is removed or assuaged, the system comes back to it's original equilibrium state, or to a new (high or lower, depending...) state.

[tcostell]

Personally, I'm convinced that all those fractal structures are descriptive not causative. Everyone I know (including me) bought that book and the Mandelbrot book, and modeled all the functions, and it never amounted to anything that could be used predictively.

I don't mean that it isn't sound research for it's own right, only that the scope needs to be defined.

[decimon]

From Wikipedia: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one!” Charles Mackay

Maybe Mackay gave us all we need to know.