It’s The 20th ANNIVERSARY Of One Of The Most Significant World Events Of Our Lifetime
I have performed a non-scientific poll of my friends, neighbors, co-workers and golf buddies to ask them what they felt were the 3 most significant world events of their lifetimes. There were a wide range of responses. A large number responded with the event which occurred 20 years ago.
It’s The 20th ANNIVERSARY Of Fall Of The Wall - One Of The Most Significant World Events Of Our Lifetime
The date was November 9, 1989. In just that sense, the world as we know it—as it truly exists—is twenty years old.
Virtually everyone reading this is a child of the Cold War: a forty-year nuclear and then thermonuclear standoff between the two actors in the twentieth century confrontation who were left standing at the end of the carnage of World War II. The older among us can remember—as I very vividly do—the third week in October 1962, when, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world came close to the violent end of the human species. Then, on November 9, 1989, in the words of the ancient song: the wrong failed, the right prevailed. And a new world was born.
This is the triumph of the free market and the failure of central planning. Its aftermath was the release of human ingenuity that freedom and a market economy always spawn. It has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in China, India, Eastern Europe, and throughout the developing world. Computing power that cost a dollar the night the Wall came down costs a penny today, and the whole world is on the Internet, instantly able to learn everything everyone knows about anything. A concerted scientific effort identified and mapped the 25,000 genes of the human genome, from both a physical and a functional standpoint, in fourteen years. Globalizing trade has raised the living standards (by suppressing the living costs) of billions of the world’s consumers.
The day after the Wall came down, the S&P 500—buoyed by the news—jumped to 339. As I write, it is 1036, or 320% higher. And if equity prices are actually lower today than they were on the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—which they are—they have still far outpaced the increase in consumer prices over the full twenty years; living costs are up about 175% in that period (that’s exactly why you own equities).
It is almost inconceivable that anyone could have lived as an adult through any significant part of the Cold War, then through the fall of the Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism, then witnessed the great forward leap mankind has made in these twenty years…and still be a pessimist.
It’s The 20th ANNIVERSARY Of Fall Of The Wall - One Of The Most Significant World Events Of Our Lifetime
The date was November 9, 1989. In just that sense, the world as we know it—as it truly exists—is twenty years old.
Virtually everyone reading this is a child of the Cold War: a forty-year nuclear and then thermonuclear standoff between the two actors in the twentieth century confrontation who were left standing at the end of the carnage of World War II. The older among us can remember—as I very vividly do—the third week in October 1962, when, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world came close to the violent end of the human species. Then, on November 9, 1989, in the words of the ancient song: the wrong failed, the right prevailed. And a new world was born.
This is the triumph of the free market and the failure of central planning. Its aftermath was the release of human ingenuity that freedom and a market economy always spawn. It has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in China, India, Eastern Europe, and throughout the developing world. Computing power that cost a dollar the night the Wall came down costs a penny today, and the whole world is on the Internet, instantly able to learn everything everyone knows about anything. A concerted scientific effort identified and mapped the 25,000 genes of the human genome, from both a physical and a functional standpoint, in fourteen years. Globalizing trade has raised the living standards (by suppressing the living costs) of billions of the world’s consumers.
The day after the Wall came down, the S&P 500—buoyed by the news—jumped to 339. As I write, it is 1036, or 320% higher. And if equity prices are actually lower today than they were on the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—which they are—they have still far outpaced the increase in consumer prices over the full twenty years; living costs are up about 175% in that period (that’s exactly why you own equities).
It is almost inconceivable that anyone could have lived as an adult through any significant part of the Cold War, then through the fall of the Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism, then witnessed the great forward leap mankind has made in these twenty years…and still be a pessimist.
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