Quote of the Day

From "The Death Of Kings" by Nick Paumgarten in the May 18th issue of "The New Yorker", 2009. There are two points here that I like. One is the comment about the term "middle ages", the other is the description of the end of the Roman Empire.

This essay gave me some negative feelings about economy, and then I heard that China was grumbling about how we might need a new world currency to replace the dollar. (The dollar replaced the pound back in the 1920's when the Great Depression started in Britain.) So I went and looked up some of the big stock market indices and they were somewhat reassuring.

Comparison of Stock Market Indices

Notice that NASDAQ (the yellow line) shows more irrational exuberance than either of other two staid old indices. There was the tech boom peak back in 2000 and the more recent run up in 2007. If you go back to '93 or '94 and use that growth rate and apply it to the last 15 years, we are right about where we should be. (There's a word for that, but I cannot think of it right now.)

Update January 2017 replaced missing images.