It was the currency we paid our entrepre-neurs, the way we financed our retire-ment, the means to corporate mergers, the measure of individual success, the game to win, the essence of our culture-stocks. In the 1990s, the stock market defined Americarnas never before. We lived in an equity culture in which we increasingly looked to the stock market to provide not only our immediate prosperity but also our social safety net-once solely the responsibility of big government and big cor-porations. Now the foundation of this equity culture, the val-uations of the stocks themselves, is being severely shaken. With stocks plunging further in a week than anytime since the Depression, consumer net wealth dropping faster than anytime in history, profits falling at a record rate, and chief executives wondering if their current business models mat-ter anymore, it no wonder that we all feel so betrayed by rnthe stock market . What has changed in so short a time.?
展开▼
