James Cleverly: An end to boom and bust

27 January, 2009

This graph really speaks for itself. For more details go see Guido

8 comments:

Simon said...: 'This graph really speaks for itself'

Really? Really? Does it?

It explains the busting of the 90's tech bubble does it?

It explains the massive fraud from Enron and Worldcom and the rest does it?

It explains why most Western indices followed the same pattern does it?

Must be great to live in a world as simple as yours.; 27/1/09 22:17
Silent Hunter said...: What's the matter Simon?

Not very good with graphs then? LOL; 27/1/09 22:40
Blue Eyes said...: What it shows, Simple Simon, is that investors in the stock market in 1997 have effectively made nothing at all in twelve years. In fact it's worse than that: savings and pensions have been destroyed, undermining thrift and hard-work. It's quite deliberate, of course.

A big "thank you" to those who let these people into power.; 27/1/09 22:56
Rog T said...: Blue Eyes,

Just a technical point or two. You say Stock market investors have made nothing. What about the dividends they've received in the last 12 years.

As to savings. I put my money in the Nationwide and Britannia building societies. They've had no problems. I seem to recall that demutualisation was encouraged by Conservative governments.

As to "those who let these people into power". That's the people of Great Britain. Do you have an issue with democracy?; 28/1/09 07:40
Simon said...: Blue Eyes,

My point (which you ignored) is that if you blame Labour - and you obviously do - for the decline in the stockmarket as illustrated by that graph, then can you explain the exact same decline in other markets.

Try the S&P 500 for example

http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/spx1960.html

Rog T also makes an excellent point that anyone who knows even the basics of investing - not you obviously - would have been re-investing dividends over the period of decline to take advantage of £-cost averaging and would most likely be ahead over the period not down.

Add to this, anyone owning property since 1997 would still be substantially better off despite the recent falls.

Don't blame other people for your lack of investment success.; 28/1/09 10:49
Excalibur said...: The picture does not lie. The graph clearly indicates that Blair and Brown are the biggest tits since Kinnock and Hattersley!; 28/1/09 10:57
Jimmy said...: It is a good thing so much money in the city is made by short selling. It is only the little people who try to make money on the stock market who lose out. It is quite funny that the banks,who do so much of the speculating are now at the mercy of these speculators, and expect the government to nationalise them!

Perhaps it is not something wrong with every western government in the world, but with the way capitalism has been working in the last decade. Hedge funds should never have been created and it is amazing we have lasted so long with them in existence, they are quite possibly working against capitalism from inside the system.; 28/1/09 12:28
Richard Young said...: Without wanting to come across all SDP, you're all a little bit right.

NewLab hasn't "ended Tory Years of boom and bust" because boom and bust are part of the economic cycle - now global. So it was always silly of Brown to insist that's what he'd done.

Equally, this graph has nothing whatsoever to do with "boom and bust" - which are more properly applied to changes in GDP, not a narrow measure of the market cap of 100 big companies listed on a UK stock exchange.

And by rights, it ought to be on a logarithmic scale to show relative performance, and probably ought to have some adjustment for trading volumes. Of course the Tory years look more stable - there was much less activity and the index was lower!

(You do all realise how little the British people respect politicians precisely because of this kind of bickering, don't you?); 10/2/09 12:09