Reader William Young comments:
Regarding your article about the Dow, the more relevant numbers to quote would be from about 9 months later when the peak of the tech stock bubble occurred. Off the top of my head, I believe the numbers were 11,750 for the Dow, 5050 for the NASDAQ, and 1550 for the S&P 500. The Dow is now slightly lower, the NASDAQ is less than half of what it was, while the S&P is down close to 20%. This covers a period of 8 years and includes some of the peak earning years of Baby Boomers as they are nearing retirement age.
Encouraging people to invest their retirement savings in speculative investments is one on a list of incredibly socially backwards practices we have in the US, along with tying medical insurance to employment and allowing a necessary commodity such as housing to be treated as a speculative investment.
