Remember when one of the hot Fed buzzwords of 2014 was "macro-prudential regulation", a phrase which was supposed to mean that the Fed can centrally plan every asst price, as well as catch asset bubbles in the making and prick them, also leading to such hilarious contraptions as the "Bubblebusters" - the Fed's own committee To "Avoid Asset Bubbles." The phrase has since quietly disappeared. And thanks to a new IMF White Paper we may know the reason why.

According to IMF researcher Brad Jones, who wrote "Asset Bubbles: Re-thinking Policy for the Age of Asset Management", the "business risk of asset managers acts as strong motivation for institutional herding and "rational bubble-riding."

This is a critical observation, and one which suggests that the mere groupthink of massive asset managers is what leads to not only herding, lack of originality and the "hedge fund hotel" phenomenon, but also to recurring and ever greater asset bubbles.