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On Fri, Feb 08, 2008 at 11:10:58PM -0800, William Chops Westfield wrote:
> 
> On Feb 8, 2008, at 8:31 PM, Peter Todd wrote:
> 
> > between 1965 and 1985
> 
> When do you consider the "cold war" period to have started?  I
> would has said MUCH earlier than 1965, and the period from 1950
> to 1965 had similar growth in DJIA compared to 1985-2000

You are right, but the cold war did extend into the mid eighties, and I
suspect what happened is initially the cold war was *relatively*
friendly, enough to still allow growth of the conomy, but as time went
on pressues such as the oil shocks and stagflation dragged things down.
Notice how the first big oil shock, in 1973, was triggered over the Yom
Kippur War, and the second, 1979, over the Iranian Revolution. Too much
turmoil, not enough stability.

Vietnam too would have dragged the economy down, sure you've got a lot
of defence-related spending, but "broken windows" still applied and you
had a heck of a lot of young men being employed in something that just
isn't very productive. Vietnam ended in 1975, right in the middle of the
flat period I'm talking about.

> Besides, isn't 1965 to 1985 when most of the interesting things
> happened in electronics and computers?  Not so much the fruits
> of Moore's law, but all the stuff that made it possible...

Quite likely it... The computer industry was still a very small part of
the economy then, and a part that probably didn't have much effect on
the DJIA.

- -- 
http://petertodd.org
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