2000: The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission adopts Regulation FD (for "Fair Disclosure"), which prohibits public companies from leaking material information to selected analysts without letting the general public know at the same time. Wall Street reacts with howls of indignation, but in the end Regulation FD actually forces at least a few analysts to try something new: actually analyzing the companies they supposedly have been studying all along.

1982: Wall Street is a wreck, reports The New York Times in a long, grim autopsy called "Dark Days on Wall Street." The article warns: "In the past two weeks, all the market averages have plunged to new lows as Wall Street, beset by cruel economic news from all sides, has time after time been unable to mount a sustained rally. That is a discouraging omen, an indication that the bottom has not been reached, many securities analysts say, and a sign that even the most steel-willed optimists may be about to throw in their towels?. 'Nobody can tell if we're starting a depression or ending one,' said a mutual fund manager who asked to remain anonymous. 'The market is one giant gamble.' " Unfortunately for people who believe what they read in newspapers, one of the greatest bull markets in history has begun — just two days earlier. The nightmare is already over, but no one has realized it yet.

William G. Shepherd, "Dark Days on Wall Street," The New York Times, August 15, 1982, p. III: 1;Laszlo Birinyi Jr., "Age of Confusion," Forbes, May 28, 2001.

1971: Alarmed at inflation, which is running at roughly a 4.5% annual rate, President Richard M. Nixon issues an executive order declaring a 90-day freeze on wages and prices. "Every action I have taken tonight," declares Nixon in a televised speech, "is designed to nurture and stimulate competitive spirit, to help snap us out of the self-doubt?.as we blaze the trail toward the new prosperity." Within three years, inflation is at a record 12.2% and the nation is in the worst recession since 1929.

The New York Times, August 16, 1971, p. 1;Stock, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation 1996 Yearbook (Ibbotson Associates, Chicago, 1996), pp. 208-209.

1929: Leonard P. Ayres of Cleveland Trust Co., one of the nation's leading business economists, declares: "This is truly a new era in which formerly well-established standards of value for securities no longer retain their old significance." Like most people who have declared any period to be a "new era," Ayres turns out to be wrong, as two months later the stock market crashes, ushering in the Great Depression.

Edward Angly, Oh Yeah? (Fraser Publishing Co., Burlington, VT, 1992 ed.), p. 53.