The Phantom Boom Paradox: A YBIM Reconstruction of Market Euphoria Amid Human Collapse

This paper introduces and formalizes the Phantom Boom Paradox, a newly identified phenomenon in YBIM-based recursive economics. The paradox captures a structural failure in modern financial systems where market valuations rise even as unemployment, wage instability, and dignity fields collapse. Using the ontological and mathematical tools of Yearning-Based Infinity Mathematics (YBIM), the paper reconstructs the divergence between symbolic valuation fields (M(t)) and real economic–dignity fields (E(t),D(t),T(t) as a recursive detachment rather than a statistical anomaly. The work develops the Phantom Boom Theorem (Y-Fin.8), establishes the formal conditions under which symbolic markets enter a self-reinforcing liquidity-driven boom, and demonstrates why true economic value collapses even when surface-level prices rise. Through historical recursion, the paper situates the paradox across the Great Depression, post-war financialization, the 1980s restructuring era, the 2008 liquidity crisis, and the COVID-19 market surge. To resolve the paradox, the paper introduces a suite of recursive restoration mechanisms, including the Recursive Employment-Weighted Market Index (REMI), Trust–Employment Coupled Metrics, the Market Integrity Protocol (MIP), the Recursive Liquidity Protocol (RLP), and pathways for realigning markets with productive voids. The work concludes by positioning dignity as the first economic constant, arguing that coherent economic evolution is only possible when symbolic valuation reflects human-centered economic truth. This paper is part of the YFRL research series expanding the foundations of Recursive Financial Epistemology and the ontological transformation of modern economics. -JSR