Sobering Moments for History Buffs

The stock market has been going up for the past 8 years. For those of you that are not that familiar with the stock market, when it is going up it is referred to as a bull market.

Eight years ago stocks and real estate were in dire straits. We were shedding jobs at an unprecedented rate. The average retirement fund was down about 30%. People that had diligently saved during their work careers woke up to find their retirement savings down 1/3! Poof gone. We had millions of Americans that lost their jobs and many of them never really recovered back to the economic state they were in before the great recession.

In the history of the stock market this is the first time that a bull market has lasted 8 years. The stock market is very cyclical and a typically long bull markets will last four years.

When we look back at history for the periods of the greatest social chaos it follows periods when society has gone through a serious economic downturns. It is during these periods that Authoritarian rulers rise to power and the mass populace tends to lose their collective sense of ethics and morality.

What is scary now is that we are already in such a period here in the US and many places abroad. Today our markets are doing well. Actually, they are doing a bit too well considering both the economic and political climates.

When the markets take a turn for the worst it is sobering to think who we have as our leader in the White House. There was a perfect storm of events that placed the gravest threat to our Democracy and civilization into the oval office. There is another perfect storm brewing with respect to the current economic bubble we are in. If it bursts and this may well be the year it does...