|
|
|
|
|
Long BoomThe long boom was a period associated with the 1990s when the U.S. economy appeared to be doing particularly well. It is also the title of a book analyzing this period. The book, written by Peter Schwarz, Peter Leyden, and Joel Hyatt and published in 1999, is in turn based on a Wired Magazine cover story from 1997, by the same authors. Both the article and the book declared optimistically that the late-90s technology-fueled economic boom would continue for another two decades, sending the NASDAQ index to ten thousand points, while technology would eliminate environmental and social problems. In retrospect, after the stock markets' near-crash during 2000-2002, led by tech stocks, with few signs of recovery, the long boom theory is by many seen as overly utopian, driven by the same baseless optimism that inflated the late-nineties Internet bubble. The long boom is also used by some historians to describe the period from approximately 1950 to the oil crisis of 1972 in which nearly all OECD economies experienced year-on-year growth. This was in part achieved through the Marshall Plan and the use of Keynesian economics. It had many social, cultural and political effects (not least of which was the demographic blip we call the baby boomers). It can be summed up (at least for the middle class) as a period of stability and prosperity in which most people could get a job for life, a wife, child, house, dog and picket fence.
|
 |
|
| Copyright 2005-2009 OnPedia.com. All Rights Reserved |
|
|