As everyone here knows, the second half of the 1990s saw a major bull market in equities in the United States, followed by a bear market that began in the spring of 2000.
The decline in stock values since March 2000 has not only vaporized trillions of dollars in wealth, but also likely played a role in worsening the recession that, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, began in the United States in March 2001.