Comments on: Measure the Dow against anything but dollars, if you dare. http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/27/measure-the-dow-against-anything-but-dollars-if-you-dare/ Human Animals at the Crossroads of Culture, Science, Religion and Media Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:35:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: grumpypilgrim http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/27/measure-the-dow-against-anything-but-dollars-if-you-dare/#comment-17247 grumpypilgrim Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:49:08 +0000 http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/03/27/measure-the-dow-against-anything-but-dollars-if-you-dare/#comment-17247 Maloney's article needs to be taken with a bit of a grain of salt. He picked the Dow's peak, in the midst of the Y2k bubble, as his baseline, but the Y2k bubble was a highly inflated period that does not represent the general behavior of the index. Accordingly, his conclusions are quite a bit more hysterical than is really true. That said, the U.S. economy is currently seeing its worst performance in a generation, and won't likely get better anytime soon. Certainly not until Bush is out of office and the long-term catastrophes he has unleashed have been fixed. Also, the Dow is only one index, and one that probably does not reflect the investment portfolio of most investors. A balanced portfolio would include, for example, equities from outside the U.S., and many of those -- in particular, emerging markets in Asia & Latin America -- have seen spectacular increases in recent years...increases that offset the U.S. performance. Maloney’s article needs to be taken with a bit of a grain of salt. He picked the Dow’s peak, in the midst of the Y2k bubble, as his baseline, but the Y2k bubble was a highly inflated period that does not represent the general behavior of the index. Accordingly, his conclusions are quite a bit more hysterical than is really true. That said, the U.S. economy is currently seeing its worst performance in a generation, and won’t likely get better anytime soon. Certainly not until Bush is out of office and the long-term catastrophes he has unleashed have been fixed.

Also, the Dow is only one index, and one that probably does not reflect the investment portfolio of most investors. A balanced portfolio would include, for example, equities from outside the U.S., and many of those — in particular, emerging markets in Asia & Latin America — have seen spectacular increases in recent years…increases that offset the U.S. performance.

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