... great story for all of us (bulls and bears a like) that "The Boston Globe" featured in its business section today ...
Sleuth resolves the mystery of who killed the bull market
by Chet Currier Bloomberg News, 12/10/2000
New York - Though the drawing room was filled with people, the only sounds came from a crackling fire on the hearth.
The hush seemed almost palpable as my old friend, the celebrated detective, prepared to tell everyone present - suspects, family members fearing the loss of their inheritance, and the assembled household staff - who had killed the Great Bull Market.
"Zut! This has been one of my most difficult cases," he began, putting his hand to his forehead in a gesture I knew well. "There were so many plausible explanations.
"The most visible wound was to the Nasdaq Composite index, which fell 50 percent in less than nine months. To the press, this made the crime look like the work of a gang of speculators.
"Certainly the bull ran with a fast crowd. And many of those people suffered from two terrible human failings, greed and
arrogance.
"They were never content with patiently waiting. Entre-temps, they boasted to others that the rules had changed and only they understood. It was a new economy, they said, and everyone else was still stuck in the old.
"Some of you in this room despised them," my friend said ominously, and a group of young people on the leather couch
shrunk back, holding their Palm Pilots before them as if to ward off a blow. "But guilty as they may be of the offenses I mentioned, they have not killed."
The great detective paused for a moment, letting the gasps subside. "Most of the other names on the police list of suspects seemed to begin with E," he muttered, almost to himself. "It was eerie."
"Euro here, for instance," he said, gesturing toward a distracted-looking youth in continental attire. "His behavior is erratic. He has been a big disappointment to his friends. But I never gave much currency to the idea that this was a foreign-exchange affair."
The detective took a sip of his beloved sirop de cassis, then clasped his hands behind his back and resumed pacing the carpet.
"Was it rising energy prices? No. That was a real enough villain in a long-ago case on which I consulted, but I didn't think so this time. The economy? Earnings? The presidential election? Merely passing concerns, obviously not strong enough to kill.
"Many people sought to pin the blame on the chairman of the Federal Reserve. They whispered, 'Mr. Greenspan, with the
interest-rate noose, in the boardroom.'
"Central bankers certainly had been known to strangle bull markets in the past. But Alan Greenspan had no motive for
murder that I could see. Here is a man celebrated for his policy acumen, telling all who would listen that his only purpose was to extend the golden age by keeping the bull from getting too fat. I believed him.
"So I was stumped - I, the greatest detective in tout le monde! In desperation, I left my study and began to walk the
streets.
"It was then that my powers of observation saved the day, where my little gray cells had failed. I saw the sidewalks
packed with people, many of them in the middle stages of life."
Here I winced as I pictured my little friend almost swallowed up in a pushing, shoving crowd. But the memory did not seem to trouble him.
"These were the famous baby boomers," he declared, his eyes aglow. "The sight of them showed me I was looking at this
case all wrong.
"If I recalled correctly, there are 77 million of these baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1962. All their lives, the
economy has provided them with whatever they wanted - an education in the 1960s, starting jobs in the 1970s and '80s,
bountiful careers now.
"Are these baby boomers ready to slow down, to cash out of stocks and clip bond coupons for their remaining years? Non,
non, a thousand times non! Consider members of this generation like M. William Gates of the Microsoft Corp. or Mme. Hillary Rodham Clinton, your senator-elect from New York. These people have plans. They will be seeking opportunities for years, decades to come.
"If they do not find these opportunities, they will make them. These baby boomers do not take 'no' for an answer. They also do not care much for tradition. When they reach traditional retirement age, it would be foolish to expect that they will quietly retire - and even more foolish, I submit, to think they will settle for less than a prosperous old age.
"Mes amis, I cannot prove it in a court of law. But I have solved the mystery. This bull market may have been
kidnapped; it may have been drugged; it may remain comatose for quite some time. There is no telling when it may revive. Even so, I now inform you, the answer to the question 'Who killed the Bull Market?' is no one, because it is surely
not dead."
This story ran on page F03 of the Boston Globe on 12/10/2000.
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