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Starting Over
If we are now watching The Sun set on a decade from hell, does it naturally follow that the next decade will be all good and glory? Of course not. And yet there are some hopeful signs. We have seen the destructiveness of deferral and neglect on infrastructure, national and global politics, financial markets and corporate governance, and I think it's safe to say that the awareness of that danger is much higher now. Maybe that's why, for the first time, a national health care bill actually has a chance to become law.
How do we fix Wall Street? By facing the music now. Toughen up borrowing requirements by banks. Increase oversight, especially when it comes to regulating derivatives. Perhaps enact a 21st century version of Glass-Steagall. And don't allow any institution to become too big to fail. Does that mean some countries may get ahead of us in terms of financial innovation? Sure, but so what? For much of this decade, both England and Iceland were considered friendlier to capital markets than the U.S. England is now threadbare; Iceland is bankrupt.
There's also a natural cycle to history. Unless you believe that this country is in the throes of a deep and permanent decline, there's no question that we will rebound. "Usually when you've had a really bad decade like this one, the next decade turns out to be much better for investors," says Richard Sylla, a professor of economics at the NYU Stern School of Business. "Probably 10 years from now, people who are investing today are going to have fairly nice returns." Over time, stocks have averaged a total return of about 9%. Remember, stocks were down 1.2% per year this decade, after being up 18.2% per year in the 1990s. Returns always revert to the mean.
And also recall that the stock market usually mirrors political and economic trends. When the future appears to be stable and certain, the market moves up. When unexpectedly positive events occur, like the Internet boom in the 1990s, stocks produce above-average returns. This decade, the surprises were mostly negative, which drove the market lower. At some point, unanticipated positive developments will again drive the market higher: perhaps a sustained easing of tensions between the West and radical Islam, breakthroughs in green technology (think energy sources) or something completely unimagined. If we were too positive heading into the 2000s, we are almost certainly too negative heading into the next decade. But that's not such a bad thing. It means we will be collectively reluctant to lard on massive debts. It means we will be wary when some mortgage man tries to sell us an exotic loan predicated on our house's doubling in value. It means we will see "financial innovation" for what it often is: an oxymoron. And most important, it means we will take more seriously our responsibility to address problems now rather than later.