Reply #21: depends on how you define "crisis"

[paulsby]

but the last pretty significant one prior to this was the tech bubble collapse.

heck, i work with a cop (another bubble follower) who watched his portfolio go from 700k to 150k

and i didn't say this was or wasn't the most serious economic crises since the great depression. it ARGUABLY is. and of course the great depression, which anybody who lIVED through will say was far worse, was not the end of the US or the end of capitalism. quite the opposite, actually.

as for the world-wide nature, i most definitely have noticed this. as a trader, over the years, it's become clear that "diversification" via many foreign equities is not diversification at all, since the markets are FAR FAR more correlated than they were 20 yrs ago.

this is due to a # of things, but imo mostly due to ETF's allowing international access, some FOREX hijinx, and the opening of easy access to foreign markets to foreign trader. heck, i've traded HSI (hong kong) and Nikkei Futures many times.

fwiw, when the market was in full euphoria mode, it was *i* who was amongst the most bearish. god knows i wasn't buying real estate. i was waiting for the crash to buy (i bought a smaller house in 1999 and ended getting a VERY nice return, selling it at a pretty good time).

was the black thursday crash of 1987 part of a normal "cyclical boom and bust"? not by most definitions of "normal", and god knows in 1987, MANY "credible economists" were wrong about the implications.