Wall Street has turned the clock back to 1997. Investors unable to extinguish their worries about a recession that has no end in sight dumped stocks again Monday. The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 251 points to its lowest close since May 7, 1997, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index logged its lowest finish since April 11, 1997. It’s as if the decade’s dot-com surge, collapse and subsequent recovery never occurred.
The Dow is just over 100 points from 7,000. Both indexes have lost about half their value since hitting record highs in October 2007.
At first I thought that this took us back to when Greenspan made his famous “irrationally exuberant” speech. But turns out that was made at the begining of 96 when the Dow was below 7,000. Almost there.
I always thought the man’s biggest problem was that he stayed in the job for too long. The longer you are in, the more you resemble the inmates.