Even Worse Than the Great Depression

Over the last couple years I loved to ridicule all the scaremongers who always said this, that or the other thing is “the worst since the Great Depression.” I stand by my ridicule, for the most part -- those prophets of doom were mostly broken clocks who look right now just by sheer luck. But there's no question now that things have gotten quite bad in the economy and the markets.

So let me do the preachers of Armageddon one better. Today's stock market isn't just the “worst since the Great Depression,” like they're so fond of saying. No, it's even worse than the Great Depression.

Take a look at the chart, below. It shows the daily progress of the S&P 500 in terms of percentage change from the very top. The brown line is the change from the recent all-time highs on October 9, 2007. The blue line is the change from the all-time highs just before the Great Depression, September 6, 1929.

As of yesterday's close (Thursday, March 5), the S&P 500 has lost 56.4% from its all-time highs 513 days ago. At the same point in the bear market associated with the Great Depression, that is at the 513 day mark, the S&P 500 had only lost -- only! -- 49%.

In other words, to be no worse than the catastrophe that happened to stocks in the Great Depression, the S&P 500 today would have to rally 17%.

Looking forward, if stocks are going to continue along the same bleak path they followed during the Great Depression, then I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we're halfway through it. In the Great Depression, the bear market lasted 997 days. We passed that halfway mark two weeks ago. Maybe that's what Barack Obama meant when he said, as he signed the so-called “stimulus” bill, that this was “the beginning of the end.”

He signed that bill on Friday the 13th, by the way. Which brings me to the bad news. By the time the bear market was over in the Great Depression, on that 997th day, the S&P 500 had lost 86.2% from the top. To match that, we'd have to fall another 68.3% from here. Hmmm…maybe that's what the president meant when he said this was “the beginning of the end.”

We can't blame President Obama for the mess he inherited. But we can definitely blame him for making it worse. Stocks are off 28.4% since his election, 15.2% since his inauguration, and 17.2% since his so-called “stimulus” bill was enacted. To say the very least, whatever he's doing, it ain't working.

I have to say I'm a little surprised. I didn't support Obama in the campaign, but I had expected that the wave of good feelings from the election of such a charismatic man would help lift the economy and the markets out of their doldrums. And while I don't agree at all with his liberal orientation in economic policy, at least I thought he was generally a centrist who wouldn't muck things up too much or too quickly. I even hoped his so-called “stimulus” bill would at least have a placebo effect.