BIS Review 69/1998  -2-  The same enthusiasms and fears that gripped our forebears, are, in every way, visible in the generations now actively participating in the American economy. Human actions are always rooted in a forecast of the consequences of those actions. When the future becomes sufficiently clouded, people eschew actions and disengage from previous commitments.
To be sure, the degree of risk aversion differs from person to person, but judging the way prices behave in today’s markets compared with those of a century or more ago, one is hard pressed to find significant differences.