Fama denied the existence of bubbles by dismissing the term as meaningless.

Evidence

I don’t even know what that means. People who get credit have to get it from somewhere. Does a credit bubble mean that people save too much during that period? I don’t know what a credit bubble means. I don’t even know what a bubble means. These words have become popular. I don’t think they have any meaning… . — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 712

Categorization

• XREF: Fama’s radical nominalism about ‘bubble’ parallels positions in the philosophy of economics where a term’s popularity is treated as evidence of its emptiness; connects to Mirowski’s larger claim that orthodoxy’s survival hinges on linguistic decontestation.