Guest Post by Simon Black
The year was 1977.
Disco was in. Star Wars was the biggest movie of the year. The world’s first personal computer was announced– the Commodore PET, which came with 8 kilobytes of memory.
And the Gross Domestic Product of the United States reached $1.9 trillion– more than double what it had been just ten years prior.
As you probably know (or possibly remember), though, most of the GDP “growth” during the 1970s wasn’t because the US economy was strong. Quite the opposite, actually.
The 1970s was a period of economic stagnation and inflation. The economy was in such bad shape that, between January 1, 1970 and December 31, 1977, the S&P 500 grew exactly ZERO percent.
Continue reading “With apologies to drunken sailors everywhere. . .”
