NYSE Wealth since 1995
It has passed several years since the New York Stock Exchange price index reached the 10,000 dollar level.
When it hit the level, then FRB Chairman under the Bill Clinton Administration reportedly thought that it should have been 7,000 dollars or so.
He checked the background with focus on increase in productivity.
It is apparent that since 1995, when Windows 95 was released with advanced Internet functions and Intel CPUs got into a continuous power-up trend, US citizens have been driven into multiplying their productivity in any activities where a PC and communications can prove their power to the full extent as convenient and effective business tools. These conditions have really allowed for launching new business and cultivating new market in the US society, leading to the boost of the NYSE index and an overwhelming sense of success among US citizens with money enough for equity investment.
I thought at that time, when Japan was said to have lost in the Japan-US Monetary War in 1990's, that the Dow Jones industrial avergae at that level was a kind of upper limits but it would stay there due to advanced financial technology of the US financial sector.
(NYSE index: 5,000 in November 1995; 8,000 in July 1997; and 10,000 in March 1999)
With that high level of stock prices, you can be given larger credit when borrowing money.
Even if the stock price level falls like in the case in September 2001, you do not necessarily have to return money immediately. There is a "time lag" in which you could purchase stocks at a lower price, which would collectively result in generating an upper momentum of the stock market again. After all, your financial credibility crisis could be avoided.
If this cycle is repeated, the NY SE index would keep, in average over time, that higher level above 10,000 dollars.
But, everything changes; the momentum of keeping the cycle might be weakened. Costly wars on terror might trigger it. Mexican workers who only send their earnings back home might have an influence on a general cash flow. New energy technology might change a view of the world economy.
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You cannot serve both God and Mammon. The super-rich cannot be super-pious. (Vatican should be a Palace of the Poor.)
Anyway, it is better being loved than being rich.
"ARE YOU JEALOUS BECAUSE I AM GENEROUS?"